So It Is (re)Written
by 23Murasaki
Summary: Take one cheerleader-turned-Slayer, one rebel-turned-Watcher, a heaping helping of endangered civilians, an agent of the Powers That Be, and a handful of prophecies. Place in Hellmouth and mix well. Garnish with Chaos. (A very long Nobody Dies AU beta'd and enabled by Stormy.)
1. 1997, Winter and Spring

She hasn't been in Sunnydale a week, and everything is already the worst. The Harvest. Hellmouths. Really. Like there's no better time and place for a big grim vampire rising ceremony? It has to be the tiny random town her mother picked?

Well, of course it has to, says a voice in the back of her mind. She's the Slayer. That's how it works. (Ugh.)

So she's frantically running through a graveyard with two people who really aren't made for stake-wielding trying to find a third person who just got kidnapped by vampires, and truth be told Buffy Summers is ready to punch destiny in the face. She's also going to deck Jesse when she sees him and confirms he's not dead or dying or in danger or in a graveyard or… well, she's going to punch him eventually.

Unless he's already dead, says a voice in the back of her mind. After all, that vampire looked like she had taken a good long bite…

It's a stroke of luck, the sort of thing you think of when someone says "dumb luck," that they find the doorway. Willow finds a dropped something-or-other, Xander trips trying to look at it, and then there's a cavernous hole in everything and the sound of muffled arguing below. They're not that far ahead, the vamps, and they're distracted. She charges.

It's also a stroke of luck that, when the whole group is fleeing the graveyard — she's injured, Jesse's unconscious in her arms, Willow is out of breath and shaking and Xander is stifling sobs — with a crowd of vampires on their tail, that the van pulls up right then and there with headlights and loud music and startled boy behind the wheel.

"Hospital!" she yells at him, for lack of anything else to yell at the moment, and he nods and they all pile in and then he guns it away. Vampires are fast, but they're not meant to chase cars on foot. (Even old dingy vans.)

Jesse lives. He's hurt, of course he's hurt, and he's out of school for an extended period of time, but he lives and Xander really does cry and that makes Willow cry while the boy with the van just sort of sits there and doesn't ask why people are babbling about vampires. In fact, he doesn't ask anything at all, except whether anyone needs a ride back home. (They don't. Parents have been called by then.)

Of course, that's not the end of anything, but the relief she feels is so solid she could practically reach out and cuddle it. No deaths. She doesn't even argue with her mother, doesn't try to explain that no, she wasn't being reckless, no, she doesn't want to get hurt, no, she was trying to save people. Exhaustion follows relief, and she falls asleep in the front seat of the car.

(She dreams, for some reason, about butterflies. It's stupid. It's better than monsters.)

Of course, it's back to awful the next day, the next night, but that's killing monsters. That's okay. That she can do. She's not going to have to be at a classmate's funeral. Xander and Willow aren't going to lose their friend. With that in mind, the vampires at the Bronze are a piece of cake to fight. Okay, not really— she'll have bruises for a week and she ends up tricking the big one, but it's close enough. They're dust, and the sun rises, and everyone's talking about muggers and PCP and gangs. And there's no funerals.

"There should at least be an assembly," says Xander wearily. "I mean, the dead rose." Giles goes off about mystical convergence, just then, because he never seems to pass over the chance to lecture, and she makes a joke of it because it's not like she'll pass over a chance to ruffle her Watcher's feathers.

In bright California daylight, everything looks okay. Everything looks normal. She almost believes it. If she thinks it hard enough, maybe it will come true.

—

She tries out for the cheer team, but it doesn't work out. Immediately after, it works out even less — there's a witch and there's body-snatching and Buffy's mom almost thinks she's gone nuts (again) and Giles does magic in a chemistry lab, and really that's all ridiculous — but Amy is friendly when she's herself and the curses get reversed and Jesse comes back to school, pale and tired and but not dead and not a vampire. She'll take it. It's not like being on the cheer team is that important. (It is.) She's not the girl she was in LA, so it doesn't matter that she can't have any part of her old life back. (It does.)

"Did you get stabbed in the neck?" someone asks Jesse in the hall.

"With an evil barbecue fork," he confirms. Xander laughs, and the unfamiliar girl beside them looks dubious.

"How'd you know it's evil?" she presses.

"Well, it was used for evil," Jesse says with a shrug, and mimes stabbing the girl at an awkward angle. "Instead of hotdogs."

So she can't be a cheerleader, so what, and she can't be popular, whatever. She'll be… she'll be something else, and that something else should, possibly, study, to make up for the classes she's missed. Not that she'd tell Giles that. She leaves Xander and Jesse to their evil barbecue forks and heads off to find Willow.

Willow says she should talk to Dr. Gregory after class, because — "really Buffy, you've missed almost two weeks of bio and I feel like you'd like it." Dr. Gregory is old and stodgy and would probably be a Watcher if he wasn't a biologist, but whatever. She fixes a face into her best cheerleader smile and goes to plead her case.

Dr. Gregory would, absolutely, be a Watcher if he wasn't a biologist. He doesn't ask why she's missing classes, but looks at her the way Giles does and suggests she stay after the classes she can get to so that she can make sure she grasps the topic.

"My office door is always open to students," he says.

It's dumb luck that she picks one day over another to come in for a remedial study session, dumb luck that she's there when something scratches at the door and dumb luck that she jumps up to answer it because Dr. Gregory is old and sitting down. The monster she sees turns her stomach, but she slams the door and bars it with a desk and watches the monster scuttle away. Dr. Gregory says it looks like a mantis, only giant. Ms. Calendar, who teaches the computer class, says it looks like a demon.

"A demon?" says Buffy, who is pretty sure it does look like one of the beasties from Giles's books yeah, but doesn't expect Ms. Calendar of all people to say that.

"Of some kind," Ms. Calendar hedges, then suggests she stay with the startled Dr. Gregory while Buffy go do Things. She says Things with an audibly capital T. Luckily "a giant praying mantis that may be a demon" rings some bell in Giles's head.

The man in leather from the Bronze comes back to warn her, obliquely, about yet another problem. (His name's Angel. He may be yet another problem.)

"What are you going to do, go around asking 'Hey, anyone see a giant monster bug or a dude with a fork hand?'" Xander asks. There aren't words for how much not-helpful that is.

"Maybe someone would say something, though," says Willow, wide-eyed. "I mean, if you ask."

"Yeah, that you're nuts," says Jesse. "C'mon, guys." Not that he offers a better idea.

In the end she winds up wandering fork-man's usual haunts, hoping to catch him if nothing else, but that night she comes up empty.

"It's not safe, you know," says a voice behind her, and she almost jumps. There's a man in an idling car, watching her. He looks old. "Not even if you know what's in the dark." She could take him, she thinks.

"Well, there's a guy with a fork for a hand and a giant demon praying mantis," she answers flatly. "Seen either of those around?" The man laughs aloud at that.

"The gentleman with the claw, briefly," he answers, somewhat to her surprise. "Try the north end of the park. Demon mantis, though, that's new. What delightful little town you've got here."

"Can't beat a Hellmouth," she says.

"You have no idea," the man replies. "I'll keep an eye out for your demon bug." And he pulls away from the curb and drives down the empty street.

Long story short, she does find fork-man and demon bug, which isn't exactly a demon in the strictest sense according to Giles as much as it is a gigantic shape-shifting monster bug. She can still kill it, though, and marks another 'no funerals' day on her mental calendar. Dr. Gregory gives her extra credit for "dissection."

(The night she kills the mantis, she dreams of butterflies again. It's possible it means something, but she could care less.)

—

Owen is nice. Owen is handsome. Owen is human. Owen is not involved in Slayer business. Owen, she thinks, is someone she can really get used to. Of course, it can't last, because Hellmouths and Orders of Whatever and vampires and Anointed Ones, and she hates it. She's sixteen and can't even have a date, for pity's sake.

When the Anointed One takes Owen down she wants to scream but can't feel her mouth through the rage. Owen lives, he wasn't hit that hard, but it's way too late for anything now, and she hates being the Slayer more than she can express. She hates it even more because Owen wants to get involved. She hates him for not staying nice and normal and person-y.

She still cries for hours when she breaks up with him.

—

Buffy has never heard of a bad thing happening at a zoo. Zoos just aren't bad-thing-happening-y places, overall. They're for kids. She knows they're for kids because she's been to this one as a kid, and not much has changed except the hyena house. The hyena house is under quarantine, though, and anyone who approaches it ends up falling over backwards.

"That's weird," Willow says, when the fifth person fall in the exact same way. A British man is arguing with a zookeeper in the doorway of the quarantined building, both of them speaking quietly. When she listens really closely she can hear snatches of their conversation. "Primal" is a fairly okay word to use in a zoo, she supposes, and so is "predatory," but the suit and the zookeeper are talking about rituals and possession too, and that's not a normal zoo discussion. (Though it is a normal Sunnydale discussion, she has to admit.) She wants to investigate, but the barrier throws her backwards too.

On the way back, the barrier is gone, and so are the two men. This time she does go investigate, only to see the Brit burst out of the building, shouting about tragic accidents at the top of his lungs. The zookeeper, she learns quickly, is dead— he fell into the enclosure trying to feed one of the new animals. By the time the authorities arrive, there's a crowd of people talking and no sign at all of the mysterious interloper.

Giles has helpful explanations about Primals and all sorts of other weird cults. It seems the zookeeper was some sort of cultist, then, because the hyena house is quickly boarded up and a group of British men confiscate everything in it. Giles says they're from the Watcher's Council. Maybe the interloper is among them.

A group of bullies try to kidnap the new school mascot, a little piglet. It's a Slayer's duty to stand up for the innocent, so she throws them around and delivers the piglet safe and sound to the principal's office.

"He's not going to stay that small, you know," says Ms. Calendar, who apparently knows more than the average person about both demons and piglets. "They can weigh over three hundred kilos– that is, more than 700 pounds."

"Then he'll really be a ferocious razorback!" says Buffy, who is trying very hard not to think about demonic possession. Ms. Calendar just laughs and shakes her head.

—

"Hey, Giles?" she asks a few weeks after the zoo incident. "What do you call a witch that's a guy?" Giles sets his teacup down with an audible clink.

"It depends on the type and situation, generally. Why?"

"That guy at the zoo was one," she explains. "The Primal or whatever. He made it so that no one could come up to the hyena house without falling over. That's magic!" She's been thinking about magic that day, about the sort the Master was using and the sort Amy's mother had used and the sort she'd seen Giles use, and how it could possibly be used to stop the Master from rising. It's not giving her any good ideas.

"The Primal?" Giles echoes. "I can't imagine… setting up barriers like that is a different field of study than what he appeared to engage in. There are different schools of magic, you see, and one has to take the values of the cultures that created them into account. The Masai—"

"Okay, then maybe it was the other guy with him. My point is, no one could get near it. I wonder if there's a way to vampire-proof something like that…"

"It would be a different spell entirely, as it would have to be focused on the undead— and the demons within them — rather than simply humans, but with a suitably powerful sorcerer it ought be possible to hold something like that for at least a few hours," he says. "In the long term, it would not be a viable plan but — what other guy?"

"The one who saw the Primal die," she says. Has no one gotten Giles the deets yet? "He was tall and … British." That's not really a good description, but she remembers the crowd and the yelling kind of a lot more than she remembers the guy.

For some reason this puts GIles's hackles up, and he interrogates her for a solid five minutes about the British witch-guy. When she can't provide even a hair color, they go ask Willow, who scrunches up her face and says the guy was British and tall too. Xander just recalls the British part, Jesse has no idea who they're talking about, and that's about when Cordelia decides to walk in.

"Oh, the creepy British guy?" she asks. "I didn't get a good look at him. Didn't really want to— there's some people you don't look at because then they'll get ideas."

"Quite," says Giles dryly.

"Ugh," Cordelia adds. "He's not hanging around, is he? Because I bet—"

"No, no, nothing of the sort," says Giles. "Nothing to worry about." (Well, that even sounds like a bald-faced lie.)

—

Guy-witches are quickly put on the back burner because the Master sends vampire assassins into the Bronze, like some sort of tacky jerk. It's the pre-fumigation party! Can't a girl have just one night to dance around roaches? Mysterious lurky Angel comes to the rescue, but ends up getting stabbed for his troubles. She sneaks him into the house, manages to convince her mother nothing's amiss, and hides him in her room for a full day while he recovers from the stabbing thing. He's dark and mysterious and handsome and nice and well-spoken and he takes her seriously and she doesn't have to keep being the Slayer a secret from him and it's really not a big deal that he's a bit older than her, is it?

And then, of course, he's a vampire, because the Slayer isn't allowed to have anything nice in her life at all ever.

The Slayer is probably not even allowed to have a mother, she thinks, once the ambulance takes her mother away and adrenaline-fueled rage gives way to bleak despair. This stupid, stupid destiny is going to take everything away from her. She got home in time this time, but what about next time or the time after that? What about Willow, who'd open doors for anyone, or Xander who'd run head-first into trouble? What about Giles with his tweed and his books? What about the school? It's not like any of them could fight off a vampire, not properly. She wants to cry, but what good would that do, now?

No, crying is no help, but a crossbow is. Standing in the dark in the Bronze, though, she knows she can't kill him no matter how loudly the voice in the back of her mind screams about it. She can't shoot him and she's too shaken after talk of curses and souls to go toe-to-toe with the girl vamp who shows up, but Angel comes through in a pinch. (The crossbow works. Crying doesn't.)

Everything is supposed to be okay, after that. There's even a post-fumigation party, and Angel kisses her in the Bronze like a normal person would before vanishing off into the dark. She clings to the surface normal-ness of that, and pretends she's just a girl with a new boyfriend.

—

She's sick of vampires. She's really truly sick of vampires. With that in mind, it's a relief when Willow gets an online boyfriend and Giles and Ms Calendar manage to bicker for fifteen minutes without pause. No time to think about the supernatural now that she has a mystery Malcolm to track down. It's the perfect perfectly ordinary sort of mystery that she can get behind, trying to figure out if Malcolm is someone she knows or where he lives. Dave in the computer lab almost jumps out of his skin when she mentions the guy, so he's a worthwhile suspect. Though why he'd need a fake identity to talk to Willow is beyond her — they do talk in real life, and Willow isn't exactly Cordelia. Well, she'd rather have Willow than Cordelia, any day.

Ms. Calendar is entirely right when she says Giles doesn't live in this century. His best suggestion for tracking down Willow's boyfriend is to stalk Dave, which is what she ends up doing anyway because Willow's the computer expert and isn't about to investigate her own boyfriend, right?

He goes somewhere called CRD. It looks secretive and full of security cameras and sneaky people, so she doesn't try to break in. The voice in the back of her mind says she should just kick down the door and get it over with, but she ignores it. (They end up going with that plan later anyway, because sometimes kicking down doors is the best solution, but that's later.)

Ms. Calendar arrives, possibly to continue arguing with Giles, and that's about when the phone rings. Buffy grabs it instead of leaving, because Giles definitely can't come to the phone right now. She tells the guy calling as much.

"No, no chance he'll take my calls, is there?" the man complains. "All he ever–" There's an audible beep on the other end of the line. He's got mail, apparently. "No matter. Do tell him this particular bit of chaos isn't mine, would you?"

"I literally have no idea who you are," she says, as Giles and Ms Calendar abruptly stop arguing in the background. "So you're gonna have to be more specific." Giles says something slightly panicked about Moloch the Corruptor. "Or, I mean, call back and leave a message at the beep, because I think Moloch's my cue to run."

"Moloch the Corruptor?" asks the man on the phone almost gleefully. "Oh my, you really are in trouble!" Buffy opens her mouth to point out that there's always trouble on a Hellmouth, when the man continues, calmer. "It collects a cult, you see. People who think they love it, and then they do all sorts of unpleasant things in its name. Find the cultists, and you find Moloch. Abrupt obsessive devotion to a stranger is… easy to identify."

"Willow," she whispers before she can stop herself. Willow who's been missing classes and staying up late and ignoring her friends and — "Can Moloch use email?"

"You're on a Hellmouth," says the man on the phone. "Anything's possible." And he hangs up on her. (The nerve!)

She tells Giles about the cult and about Willow and randomly helpful phone guy, and Ms. Calendar looks pensive rather than freaked out.

"Obsessive devotion," she murmurs. Buffy waves her hands.

"He's got Willow!"

"He has more than just Willow," says Ms. Calendar. Then she smiles, grim and not-very-teacher-y. "And I have a plan."

The plan involves a power-cut and trapping possessed (entranced?) teenage boys in janitors' closets before rallying what Ms. Calendar calls her cyber-coven while Buffy goes to play damage control at Calax Research and Development. It goes… not so well, but she does eventually trash the Molochbot and break the spell, so it's all good.

She just wishes Malcolm had been a normal creep. A normal human creep. But it's the Hellmouth, so that's probably impossible. Willow agrees. Xander starts to.

"Though, I mean— Jesse almost got eaten and he's got a girlfriend now," he adds, thoughtfully. "Maybe we just need to get almost eaten." Buffy vetoes the idea as vehemently as she can.


	2. 1997, Summer

Principal Flutie tries to organize a talent show, but is hastily overruled by a teacher committee. It is not, Ms. Calendar insists, going to improve school spirit. Instead there's a science fair, which goes really well for people like Willow and less well for the rest of the world, but it goes not-well in a completely mundane way.

The demon apparently roaming the school's halls is unrelated. Morgan's got a presentation on particle physics, a talking demon-hunting dummy, and only a few months to live. Buffy takes out the demon in the girls' locker room with a baseball bat and the dummy goes ahead and stabs it, but there's nothing she can do about tumors.

Morgan, she realizes, will be her first classmate-funeral here. The first and the only, she thinks vehemently. He seems like a nice kid and he's her age, he's just sixteen. He's far too young to die.

"It's fate, at this point," Morgan tells her, cradling the no-longer-animate dummy gently. "I don't want to die, but that's how it has to be. I hope it'll be quiet."

Giles doesn't know how to magic away a tumor. He's not sure it's possible.

"What's the point of a mystical convergence if you can't fix things?" she asks. "What's even the point?"

"Sometimes there isn't a point," he says. "Sometimes it's just chaos."

(She dreams about the butterflies again. This time she has the sense to ask them what they mean, but they don't answer her.)

—

She dreams that she dies at the hands of the Master, and when their nightmares come to life she does die. But even dead and buried and raised, she's still herself, and she can still fight, and at the end of the day she wakes up. They all wake up, whole and alive and victorious. She stands in the sunlight with her friends and feels safe in the knowledge that it was just a nightmare, it was nothing more than a nightmare, and reality is so much better.

Also Xander asks her out, which is a mess, but it's a normal high school mess and a normal high school awful, even though he really takes rejection terribly. He mopes, Willow sulks, Buffy complains, Giles polishes his glasses, and then the sun comes up and it's another day and they can all more or less be happy together.

She's more grateful for that then she can say, for the normal stupid high school problems.

—

She's fated to die at the hands of the Master. Giles looks broken when she finds out, and Angel is silent and blank-faced, but she's angry. She's blindly, furiously angry. She's angry that no one told her about the prophecy, angry that it exists, angry that she's going to die, that she has to die at sixteen but she's angry about little things too. She's angry that the first classmate-funeral is going to be her own. She's angry that she won't get to go to prom. She's angry that she'll never learn to drive. She's angry that it's not a dream and she can't wake up. She's angry — now — that she didn't end up making the cheer team and that she's not going to visit her dad over the summer and that she's not ever going to get married and it's all because she's got a stupid destiny as the stupid Slayer.

So she quits.

But she is her stupid destiny as the stupid Slayer just as much as, if not more than, she is a teenage girl, so she puts on her prom dress, that beautiful white thing her mother bought her, and Angel's jacket, willingly given, and Giles's crossbow, after she knocks him out for wanting to go with her, and goes to war. She's going to die, but she'll die fighting.

(Death is coming to the school, too. Ms. Calendar staked a vampire in the A/V room, according to Willow. It makes Buffy laugh. One last laugh before she goes, she thinks.)

And she does die. The world goes black and her heart stops, and she does die, but she wakes up to Angel and Xander standing over her and weird, mad energy singing in her blood. This isn't like her nightmare-death, where she woke up scared and wrong, this is something much, much better.

And now she is, if possible, even angrier, but it's the cold, clear sort of anger that she'll later think belongs more to the Slayer than to Buffy Summers, age sixteen, insofar as those are two different people.

She marches back to the school and kicks the Master's ass. There's more to it than that, some strategizing, some frantic yelling, Cordelia driving a car through a wall, the Hellmouth opening in the library, Giles on a table with a foul-smelling candle, lots of vampires… But the important thing is, she kicks the Master's ass. The second important thing is that she kicks his ass in her pretty white dress.

The weight of destiny drops from her shoulders. Not forever, no, but just for the night.

—

The next day it feels like lead on her shoulders again, like something heavy enough to break all her bones and drag her through the earth into the depths of the Hellmouth itself, and she thinks she may just run until her legs give out.

She doesn't have to, though, because her father comes like some sort of awkward blessing and suggests she stay with him for the summer. LA is only a short drive away, really, but it feels like escape, like another world, so she jumps at the chance and pretends not to see her mom's hurt expression when she practically flings herself into her father's shiny new car. (Anything to get away.)

—

LA should be better. It's not a Hellmouth, after all, and her father doesn't know she's the Slayer and all her old friends are there, but her old friends are distant and her father looks at her as if she's about to relapse into mental-institute-long-term-stuff, which sucks because she wasn't crazy to begin with. Instead of enjoying herself, she lurks.

On the street (where she can leave the crushing fear-anger-thing behind a little), she runs into a young man with deep dark eyes and a troubled expression. He is the only one who makes eye contact, and he steps out of her way when he does.

"Am I that scary?" she snaps at him. He blinks.

"Sure you are, Slayer," he says. The hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

"How did you know?" she asks, shaken. Does she have a sign on her back? Is it her hair? Does she have Slayer hair? She wants to cry. Or deck him. She's leaning towards decking him.

"Sort of easy," he says. "You've got the —" He gestures vaguely. "Feel."

"I'm on vacation," she says. "I'm not all Slayer-y."

"I'd bet you're always Slayer-y," says the man. "But vacations sound like something I can get behind." He offers her a crooked grin, and belated warning bells ring. Not human. Not a person. Monster. Not, she thinks, a vampire, but not human.

"And what are you?" she asks.

"Name's Doyle," he answers, pleasantly. Almost pleasant enough to make her ignore that he hasn't answered her question. "What's yours?"

"Buffy," she says. "What are you?"

"I live here, kiddo," he says. "A lot of us do." He sounds almost sad when he says it, more than almost gentle. "It's okay, though," he adds. "Usually it's quiet."

"And when it's not quiet?" she asks.

"Then it's a city," says Doyle. "Happens to the best of them."

She kills three vampires and an intensely slimy and vicious demon before she leaves LA, because a Slayer can't have vacations, and she dreams every night of the Master's rebirth. (And she rages against the weight on her shoulders, but nothing she does can rid her of it.)

—

Two days after she comes back to Sunnydale, she foils the Master's rebirth. At least it's foiled. She's pretty sure he can't re-bone-ify to be re-undeaded, but she still sobs on Angel when it's all through, when the Master and his minions are well and truly dust. It hurts more than dying had.

And yet, life goes on. School, classes, Willow and Xander, Jesse and his girlfriend, Cordelia and her girls, arguing with her mother, homework, Slayer training. She's missed it, as much as she doesn't want to have missed it. The routine is nice. Sniping at Giles and bickering with her friends is nice. Girl talk with Willow is nice.

Sunnydale is nice, even if it is on a Hellmouth. It's just like how she left it, and the sun comes up every morning, and it's a relief. (It's home, her home, though she doesn't know it yet. She's home, and that makes everything better, little by little.) Life goes on.

—

Of course it's less than a week into junior year that she walks into the library and hears the phrase "virgin sacrifice." Because she really, really can't have nice things. The full context of that is that she walks into the library for her Tuesday afternoon training sessions with Giles and hears, very clearly:

"Oh come on, Ripper, it's a virgin sacrifice! Doesn't it sound fun?"

"No," says Giles as if he's talking to a little kid. "No it really doesn't." She takes a few more steps and sees Giles standing with his arms folded in front of a very large sarcophagus. There is another man — tall and skinny and grinning too wide — sitting on the sarcophagus and gesturing broadly.

"It's not like I'm asking you to do it," says the man on the sarcophagus. "She's good and dead already, old man."

"Ethan, put that sarcophagus back where it came from or so help me I will call the Council down on you," says Giles.

"Hi?" says Buffy before the guy on sarcophagus can open his mouth. Giles's frown deepens.

"Hello, Buffy," he says loudly. "Ethan, this is Buffy — she's the Slayer. Buffy, Ethan. We used to… know each other… once."

"Used to know each other once," echoes Ethan leaning back on his perch. "Yes, that isn't even slightly suspicious, excellent acting on your part."

"Hi, I slay things," says Buffy, who is an expert at excellent acting and seriousness. She offers him her hand to shake.

"Charmed," says Ethan. She grips his hand too tight, but he doesn't flinch. "Would you care for a virgin sacrifice?" Giles is shaking his head vehemently, as if she really needs his advice to say no.

"Nope, not a fan," she says. Ethan rolls his eyes.

"None of you are any fun, did you know that?"

"Why's there a sarcophagus in the library?" she asks, before he can elaborate on what he considers fun, because she gets the distinct impression that it's something gross.

"Virgin sacrifice," says Ethan. "Or rather, she was one. Want to take a look?"

"No!" This time she and Giles manage to say that at the same time, and Ethan snorts.

"Pity, that," he says, and jumps off the sarcophagus and pushes it open with one fluid motion.

And for a moment, a stupid little moment, she sees a girl lying there — a girl her age with long dark hair and a round childish face, frozen in fear, but the next instant there's just a mummified corpse. She recoils, startled. Giles, though, Giles takes a step forward and breathes:

"Fascinating…"

"Thought you'd be interested," says Ethan. "You know, there's even a curse!" Of course there's a curse. When isn't there a curse?

They break the curse and save stupid Ethan's stupid virgin sacrifice and figure out how to make it so that she doesn't kill people when she touches them. That takes Giles, Ms. Calendar, creepy Ethan, and Willow with a spellbook and a bundle of burning something all working together, but they do pull it off even though a man shows up to warn them that she's cursed to drain the life out of people.

"Wouldn't want that," says Giles, his posh accent slipping just a little.

"There are ways around it," says Ms. Calendar. "Other people's magic."

The girl, the sacrifice, says her name is Chuxi, and she has been awake in her coffin all those years. She feels human, she's sixteen and wants to see sunlight and fall in love.

"And go to prom," Buffy adds.

"I don't know what that is," says the girl. "But if it's important, I'll go to it."

"It's a dance party," Buffy says, and watches Chuxi light up. "You'll love it."

—

Chuxi is smart, but keeping her cover un-blown takes effort and focus and attention to detail, and Buffy's not all that good at those things when they're not related to stabbing the undead. And Angel isn't helping, not even a little. (Neither are the butterflies. They're out in force in her dreams now, to the point that they interrupt other ones.)

Actually, she's pretty sure Angel's doing the opposite of helping, in that he makes her so distracted and frustrated that she wants to scream instead of doing the stabbing on the stupid vampire that's not even showing up. And she has math homework.

The vamp does show, eventually, and she stakes him, but she also falls face-first into an empty grave. And it's like, completely empty. It looks like someone dug it up. Angel finds drag marks where the corpse was hauled away, which means there's probably not another random vamp around, but it does mean there's something she's not familiar with around.

(At least creepy Ethan has skipped town with his ancient cursed plate?)

The next day she finds Giles practicing pickup lines on a chair, which sure is even more distracting. She saves him from abject failure — he's sure not going to win Ms. Calendar over by stammering every word in a sentence expect indecorous — by mentioning the empty grave.

"Grave robbing? That's new," he says, eyes lighting up a little. "Interesting…" Well, he's definitely not going to win Ms. Calendar with that, either.

With Willow's help, they track can put names to empty grave, or rather empty graves. There are three, all belonging to girls who should have been in their senior year. She'd heard about the car accident that killed them, but had promptly put it from her mind once she could be sure there was nothing supernatural about it. The realization is uncomfortable, as is the realization that even these poor girls aren't allowed to rest easy in Sunnydale. Even having a completely normal -sad death doesn't mean you don't get to be part of an army of zombies.

Concerns about an army of zombies are quashed when Cordelia finds a bunch of cut off body parts, which is ridiculous and also gross and also sort of random. Wouldn't multiple dead bodies generally be better than pieces? (Though the idea of a just a zombie hand running around is pretty creepy, she has to admit.)

But it's not just a zombie hand, which is the sort of thing you can probably stab or put in a box and mail to creepy Ethan at the very least. It's Willow's sort-of-friends from the science fair planning to jigsaw together girls' body parts, and that's worse than vampires. Vampires have the no-soul-bloodsucking-demon thing going to sort of excuse their creepy weirdness, but boys from the science fair really don't. Not for making zombie girls, and not for killing.

At least science fair boys don't really have super powers. She can beat them up and bully the truth out of them easily, and the truth is that there's already a zombie guy and it's Chris's brother and Cordelia's dead ex and he wants his girlfriend back because guys are awful whether dead or alive and a kidnapping, a wrecked date for Giles, a loose zombie, Chuxi with machete, and a lot of fire later the day is mostly saved.

Chris cries when his brother dies a second time. Eric cries when he's arrested for kidnapping. She hates it when the bad guys are real people.

—

"You're sort of heroic, aren't you?" Cordelia asks the next day, eyeing Chuxi with vague distaste. "I guess you fit right in with these … people." Chuxi folds her arms and frowns.

"Would you rather have been decapitated? By… nerds, is the word?" she retorts. Cordelia grimaces.

"That's not the point–"

"Then what is?" They actually look pretty similar, staring each other down across a hall. To Buffy's unending surprise, Cordelia is the one that folds first.

"I guess I wanted to say thank you," she mutters. "And also that you're crazy."

"You can always leave," says Chuxi. "You can, but you don't. I think you're as crazy as all of us." Cordelia storms off and Xander says something snippy about there being an "us" all of a sudden, but she's not wrong. She's like, creepily not wrong, because after that Cordelia does keep helping and Chuxi throws herself into Hellmouth research and Ms. Calendar drops by the library with an armload of protective crystals to ask Giles out on a second date, and all of that feel pretty damn us-ful.

—

Parent-teacher night is bad enough normally, because it means her mom is going to get to hear all about how Buffy can't sit still in class and keeps missing assignments and really can't speak French. This year it's worse, because a gang of vampires invades the school and tries to kill everyone. They don't succeed, because they're faced with way more opposition than the average high school can throw at them.

Xander and Angel team up — somehow — and manage to throw some of the vampires around. Chuxi fire extinguishers one in the face. Ms. Calendar threatens to rain down curses in a language Buffy's never heard and wields a mop like a sword. Giles at some point wields a baseball bat with apparently impressive accuracy. Herbert the pig actually charges at a bunch of them, sending them scattering — apparently a pig in a football helmet is not something the undead are prepared to deal with. Cordelia locks a vampire in a closet, panics, and hides in a bathroom with Willow for hours. Buffy duels the — remarkably competent but also remarkably leather-and-nailpolish — leader, and her mom takes a fire axe to the guy's head at an opportune moment. He gets away, but only just.

Instead of grounded Buffy gets a hug and told how proud her mom is of her ability to protect people, and the lights come back on to dust and not that much blood and a school full of scared living people.

—

By the next morning, the official story is gangbangers on PCP. No one questions it, even though Buffy is like 90% sure PCP doesn't make you grow fangs. Principal Flutie gathers everyone for an assembly about how drugs are bad, and Buffy goes after him in a huff later on.

"They weren't on drugs!" she snaps. Herbert snuffles at her pockets and she gives him a cookie without really thinking about it. "You saw them– I know you saw–"

"Vampires, yes," says Flutie wearily. "But you can't say that on television. Word from the mayor's office is that it's always a gas leak, and if it's not a gas leak, then it's PCP." She probably gapes at him, but at that moment she can't feel her face at all.

"You – you know?" she manages to ask. It feel like she's really been punched in the gut. The adults, the authorities, the principal and the mayor and the police probably all know, and they're just sweeping it all under the rug.

"Hard to keep something like that secret," he says. "Some people have to know everything or else everyone's going to know something." And then he smiles and pats her on the shoulder and calls her a good kid and ushers her out of his office.

And two days later he quits, only staying long enough to introduce his replacement.

"And I would like you all to give a warm welcome to your new principal, Robin Wood," he says, with a broad gesture towards the man in question. "Please make him feel welcome, and know you can rely on him. In all ways."

Robin Wood, who is young and handsome and impeccably dressed, smiles thinly at that last part, an expression so cold Buffy almost expects to see fangs.

"Thank you," he says. His warm, pleasant voice is a sharp contrast to that smile. "I know Sunnydale has more than its share of problems, but I like to think we can solve them if we work together to find the root cause. And as your principal, I swear to do my utmost to make sure each and every one of you comes out on the other side of high school whole, healthy, and well-equipped to face the world… and anything it can throw at you."

Author's Note: And now this plot is officially off the canon rails. BOOM.


	3. 1997, Fall

She's pretty sure school doesn't prepare you for boys. Although, really, if there was a class on how to deal with your semi-boyfriend not being able to actually boyfriend because he thinks he's too old for you, she's probably missed it. Because slayage. At least it's been quiet enough lately that she can, actually, do homework and go to the Bronze like a normal teenager. A part of her mind wonders if Principal Wood has anything to do with it, if he knows about the Hellmouth too and can glare monsters into submission. (That'd be a useful power to have. He sure can do it to teenage boys!)

Cordelia tells her — or rather, Cordelia tells everyone in earshot repeatedly — about her new boyfriend from UC Sunnydale. He's at UC Sunnydale because, you see, he's in college. He's older than her. He's charming. He's rich. He's in college. Has she mentioned that? She's going to a college party with her rich college boyfriend. Who's in college. And rich. Buffy wants to wring her neck, just a little. She wants to wring the rich college boyfriend's neck when he shows up with his creep buddies who insist she come to the party too a fair bit more, because Cordelia is just being Cordelia but college boys are supposed to be mature, aren't they?

But she goes to the party anyway, because no boys are mature including Angel. She knows what she wants, and Angel can shove his arrogant… what't the word? Patronizing? Patronizing attitude about her being too young for him. She'll show him. She'll show Giles and his stupid Watcher-y-ness too. (She tells Willow she's going, though. Willow's her best friend here. It's different.)

And then it turns out to be the Sunnydale version of the worst kind of parent-nightmare party ever, which means people got drugged but also almost sacrificed to a giant snake. She kills the giant snake and breaks some noses, and Chuxi stabs a guy with a fork while Xander is in drag which would be hilarious under any other circumstances, but this time she's just upset. All she wanted was one party. Can she have one party that doesn't involve demons? (She's the Slayer. Of course she can't.)

—

Giles's promise to go easy on her hasn't really translated into action. It's translated into somewhat less rigorous training, okay, but that's come with a side of weirdly overprotective. She's not sure how to deal with that. She can break most guys with a well-aimed kick, and what remains is enemies and Angel. Angel takes her out to coffee and flirts awkwardly, but still gets Giles-threats when they both think she's not around. It's … sort of nice? But it's mostly really weird. She's pretty sure it's not a Watcher's Duty to give boyfriends the dad talk.

The thought makes her freeze up. He is giving Angel the dad talk, adjusted for circumstance, and it's all kinds of weird because she has a dad. Her dad should… Her dad's in LA and won't give anyone the dad talk, because he's out of the loop and out of her life most of the time. And sort of in his place, now, is Giles with a bottle of holy water and a buttload of Watcher-y snark.

—

Halloween is coming up, and Cordelia crashes an Angel-date while Buffy's out slaying. It sucks. Being the only girl in the Bronze who looks like she fell through a hay stack sucks more. Angel's nice about it, of course, but he's always the same sort of nice to her. She has no idea what makes him tick or what he's into. She wants something that could impress Angel, or at least make up for Watcher-holy-water-dad-talks, but more than that she wants to spend the one night where all things demonic lay low being a girl.

So she and Willow do the girly thing and break into Giles's office after school. There's no Giles there but there are Watcher-notes and books and things in languages neither of them can read, and a convenient notebook of all things Angel-related. Willow finds that one, while Buffy flips through incomprehensible books and finds an old photograph.

It's a silly sort of photo, and sort of old. A group of six kids around her age, maybe a bit older, she thinks, only from way back whenever. One boy with a pierced nose and is grinning viciously, his arms slung around two of his friends. Another is trying to light a cigarette with the one he's already got in his mouth. One's playing the guitar, fingers blurred, while another seems to have been caught mid-gesture at the camera. The only girl in the photo is stealing a a flask from a boy who's sticking his tongue out at the camera.

"Who're they?" Willow asks. There's no writing on the photo, so Buffy just shrugs.

"No idea," she says. They look happy, fashion disasters aside, whoever they are. Willow giggles.

"They're kind of cool, aren't they? N-not that I could ever…" she trails off. Buffy eyes the girl with the flask with a new curiosity. They probably can't get Willow's hair like that, but she'd bet she could get her hands on that kind of outfit… And, well, Halloween's only once a year. Still, she makes sure to put the photo back and clean up the office as best she can. She doesn't want Giles to know they're in there.

Once everything's back in place, they make for the door, only to hear footsteps in the library proper. Willow squeaks, Buffy prepares a dozen excuses, and suddenly Principal Wood emerges from the supernatural-monsters-and-magic section with a thick text on vampires. They make eye contact. Willow squeaks again.

"Hello, sir!" Buffy chirps. Wood stares blankly at her.

"Good evening," he says calmly. "I didn't hear you come in."

"Oh, uh… I'm sure you were busy in the uh, the…" She points lamely. Wood tucks the book under his arm.

"The historical fiction section," he says. "A true weakness of mine, I'm afraid."

"Totally," says Buffy. "We were just, uh, leaving now very fast." And she grabs Willow's arm and gets out of there.

—

The next day, Giles is absolutely furious. For a moment she thinks he knows he's been robbed, or maybe that he knows Wood's been in his public viewing Watcher books, but no, apparently he's just this mad about something else. At least the night before Halloween is almost as quiet as Halloween.

"Mischief Night," says Giles, when asked. "But I can assure you we'll have none of that." She wonders who else got the holy-water-dad-talk to make that possible. Still, the patrol that night is quiet, and she spends most of it complaining to Willow about her disaster of a love life or trying to convince her to dress like a punk on Halloween.

"I think I'm going to be a sheet ghost. Again," says Willow. Buffy rolls her eyes.

"Come on. You have to–" A twig snaps, and she whirls, stake in hand only to come face to face (and stake to neck) with creepy Ethan, who looks a bit worse for wear.

"Evening," he manages weakly. She keeps the stake where it is.

"What are you doing here?" Okay, so she's not supposed to stake humans, but creepy Ethan really should know better than to sneak up on her. He raises his hands quickly.

"Not up to anything, promise," he says. "Dear old Rupert would flay me if I were. Apparently I'm a corrupting influence." He doesn't seem particularly insulted by that. "Regardless, I couldn't help but overhear your little chat…"

"See, that's why you're a corrupting influence. Because you spy on teenage girls," says Buffy, folding her arms. He's probably not worth the stabbies. Probably.

"I was–" Ethan begins, then grins sheepishly. "I had an excuse, but it's possibly even worse. Anyway, I've got something you may like, Slayer."

"Is it a virgin sacrifice? Because I don't want one of those."

"A virgin sacrifice?" Willow asks, wide-eyed, while creepy Ethan stifles laughter.

"Well, I'm sure one could be arranged if you wanted it," he says. "No, it's nothing dead, don't worry." With a flourish, he offers her a box from his bag. It's got a bow on it and everything, so she takes it without thinking. He's turned his attention to Willow now.

"I've got something for you too, Little Red," he adds lightly, and holds out something small and wrapped in glittery paper.. Buffy opens her present, feeling a bit dubious. It's a dress.

More aptly, it's The Dress, an almost perfect replica of what she saw in the Watcher diary, only deep red where the drawing had been colorless. It's almost exactly what she'd been dreaming of, with little pink roses and lace and bows and all. She runs her fingers over it, wondering if it's cursed.

"They're just objects now, of course," says Ethan lightly. "Meant to be part of an event, but clearly that's not in the stars this year." Willow's present is a necklace of some sort, a locket maybe. (She doesn't get a good look.)

"What do you want?" she asks, before Willow can babble and before, hopefully, a spell can be cast.

"Why am I always assumed to have an ulterior motive?" Ethan asks theatrically. "Maybe I just wanted to do something nice for you girls." She glares. He wilts. "Alright, fine. I'd like you to point out to Rupert bloody Giles that if I wanted to rain disaster down on his head and his precious little town, I'd have done it already. I'm not here to sow chaos—I mean, not primarily, anyway. I promise."

"So you're stalking us so that you can bribe us into telling Giles that you're only a little bit up to chaos and destruction?" she asks. Ethan runs a hand through his hair in exasperation.

"Well," he says defensively, "I have to cause a little bit of chaos and destruction. It wouldn't be any fun otherwise. But I'll make it up to him, I promise."

"In a nice way?" Willow asks, and for a moment Buffy wonders if they're even the same age. Willow looks like a little kid standing there, watching Ethan like he's going to transform into an actual authority figure right before her eyes. He pauses, smiles crookedly.

"Well, I'm not going to bake the man cookies," he says. "But yes, in a nice way. I promise. And a completely proper nice way at that. Alright?"

"Alright," says Willow uncertainly. Ethan's smile widens.

"Good girl," he says. "I hope you both have a wonderful Halloween." And he vanishes into the dark, even though Buffy's trying very hard to keep an eye on him.

—

She wears the dress. Willow, after much needling, wears the fake nose ring and fake eyebrow ring and the whole set, and Giles almost chokes at the sight of her. Jesse and his girlfriend are dressed up like comic book characters.

"I'm the Invisible Girl!" Jesse's girlfriend announces happily. "Only. Not invisible."

"I still say you could've been The Thing, Xander," Jesse tells him. Xander rolls his eyes and shoulders his toy gun.

"Xander's not a thing," says Chuxi, who's dressed like a ballerina and manages to look the part. "Oh, no— wait, you showed me those. He's not orange!"

"Thanks for that," says Xander sincerely.

(Apparently sticking up for a guy's not-orange-ness can be the key to his heart, because once the kiddies are dropped off she catches Xander and Chuxi kissing behind someone's garage.)

"That really was a lovely outfit," Giles tells her a few days later, after Angel's promised he likes her as she is and after she's tripped down half a flight of stairs on the hem of the stupid dress. "I almost didn't recognize you and Willow at first."

"That's the point of Halloween, right?" she says. "I'm glad nothing went wrong. I feel like presents from creepy Ethan don't normally go over well…" Giles chokes on his tea for real this time.

—

She missed Ford, which blinds her to his bullshit for a very short period of time. It's still long enough for him to get a group of people no one would miss into a building with concrete walls and no doorknobs on the inside, and she's trying frantically to plan a way out for people who don't understand they need one, when there's a crash and a crunch of metal and someone takes down the door with a car. Spike, on the stage, manages a flat "What?" before crossbow bolt start flying and the sacrifices flee for the exits. Spike and the woman he calls Dru make a break for it while Buffy and the newcomer take out the minions, but they almost had him. Almost.

As the dust settles, she turns to see who she's been fighting back to back with, and almost jumps. It's Principal Wood, only not dressed like a principal at all and armed to the teeth. He jogs out in vain pursuit of Spike and Dru, but they're long gone.

"Sorry about your car, sir," Buffy says lamely. The principal, who is apparently well versed in vampire hunting and has multiple! stakes! and a crossbow! with extra ammo! frowns over the damage.

"I'm sure I'll have hit a deer or something," he says. "Almost had him in there."

"Spike?"

"Yes. He's tough to pin down, even for a Slayer." She stares. He smiles blandly back at her. They compare notes as they deliver an unconscious Ford to his parents.

It's jarring to think of a Slayer with a kid, but Giles says his story checks out, right down to Nikki Wood's murder and where her watcher moved afterwards. They strike a deal in the library that night.

"Is it really common?" she asks abruptly, as Principal Wood drives her home.

"What?"

"Brain– brain cancer. Morgan's got it, and now Ford, and Morgan said there's a lot of people in the hospital in LA…" she trails off, feeling stupid. Vampires she know how to deal with. Cancer, that's way outside her area of expertise.

"No," says Principal Wood slowly. "No, it is not all that common at all." They finish the drive in silence.

—

Giles is out again, and there's a voicemail on the library phone from some slay-ful hour of the morning that he must've forgotten to delete. Chuxi presses play, because she's nosy, and they all listen in. Buffy sort of wishes they hadn't. At least it's short.

"Ripper?" It's a woman's voice, low and rushed and terrified. "Ripper, please, I don't have time. You have to help— you have to believe me—It's coming. For all of–" And then it cuts out.

—

Giles misses her training. Giles misses a stakeout. Giles misses taking down six vamps in lab coats. Okay, now she's worried. She marches back to the library and wonders where Giles even lives, because surely he'd be home at this point, right? But no, he's at the library, sitting by the phone and drinking. Drinking alcohol, not tea.

"Giles?" she calls out, quietly as she can. He jumps anyway.

"Buffy! I– oh, the blood bank." He looks her up and down, takes in a slightly torn jacket and dusty leggings. "Well, good work."

—

The phone must not have rung that night, because Giles looks dead on his feet in the morning. She shows up when she's supposed to have computer class (Ms. Calendar would understand, right?) with every intention of interrogating him, only to find him glued to the phone and mumbling "please pick up" under his breath. She's never seen him like this. She's never seen him not being a Watcher.

Finally he sets down the phone, runs his hand over his face.

"Buffy, don't you have class?" he asks. He almost sounds like normal. Almost. It's not close enough.

"I was worried," she starts, but doesn't get a chance to finish her sentence.

There's a frantic hammering at the library's back door, and Giles almost jumps out of his skin. Okay, she's going to deal with this. Now. Before he can say anything (like "Buffy, be reasonable" or "don't do that") she marches to the door and yanks it open. There's two people standing there.

"Hello love," says the woman. She looks exhausted, with bags under her eyes and slightly frizzy brown hair that looks like it hasn't been brushed in few days, and she doesn't quite manage to keep the shiver from her voice. "Does Rupert Giles work here?" The man behind her looks just as wiped out, and they both sag with relief when she nods.

"Yeah," she says. "He's in there– hang on." Giles rushes over when she yells for him, and she sees another first—Giles goes from wound up and skittish to throwing his arms around the woman in a second flat.

"Diedre!" he gasps out. "Philip– you two—I was worried about you!" And he drags them both into the library. The man, Philip, grimaces.

"Didn't really want to hang around, all given," he says. "Sorry if we missed a call or two, old man." Diedre clings to Giles like he's some sort of walking tweed security blanket.

"Are Tom and Ethan lurking somewhere in here?" she asks. Giles freezes.

"You haven't heard from them?" he asks. Diedre shakes her head.

"Figured they'd already come," says Philip, pale face going even paler. "Last I talked to Ethan, he was on his way." Giles swears under his breath, and suddenly he doesn't look very Giles anymore.

"Can someone tell me what's going on?" Buffy asks. Philip looks at her like she has two heads. Diedre exhales slowly.

"Are you his student?" she asks.

"I'm the Slayer." The situation desperately needs perkiness. "Pleased to meetcha!"

"Likewise," says Diedre. "Short version, there's a demon out to kill all of us and your Watcher, and I'm pretty sure it killed two of our friends already." Buffy's blood runs cold.

"Can I stab it?" she asks. Because when isn't stabbing the answer?

"Not really," Giles says, snapping back to Watcher mode. "It – ah, it would only damage the host, not the demon itself. I have yet to discern a way to do the opposite. It can be forced out of the host, of course, but that is barely a temporary solution."

"Oh. That sounds bad."

"It is," says Diedre, and rubs her hands over her arms. She's wearing a pink cardigan and a neat pearl necklace, and looks entirely not like the sort of person who gets chased by a demon. Then again, neither does Giles. Philip scores a little higher on the chased-by-demons scale by virtue of the creepy facial hair.

"So how–" Buffy starts, and then the door bursts open again. This time it's Ethan, winded and injured, stumbling over the threshold. Diedre makes a strangled noise and reaches out to him.

"Tom," he says between gasps. "He's got Tom. I– I've got a plan, just—" Another crash. Ethan winces, and something monstrous and spiny appears in the doorway behind him. "Just distract him!" Ethan snaps, and ducks under Giles's outstretched arm to flee into the stacks.

"Running and hiding," Giles yells after him. "Typical plan for you!"

The demon walks slowly, almost lazily. In library-light, it's hideous. She's seen some ugly monsters already, but this one looks like its skin is coming off, like its rotting, and it's smiling like it's having a great time. Philip whimpers and leans away from it, looking like he'd be following Ethan into the stacks if he could get his legs to move. Diedre sets her jaw and takes a step forward.

"Hey," she says, her voice dropping a full octave and swapping out Giles-accent for something thicker. "You look like shit."

"You look positively normal," the demon rumbles. "I'd never guess you were one of us once upon a time."

"You'd be surprised what you can hide under a frumpy dress," she says coldly. The demon's advancing toward her, that same lazy walk. It doesn't seem like it's hunting. It seems like it's playing. Behind her, Buffy hears the telltale creak of someone going into the library the real-people way.

"…Giles?" That's Willow. Oh no, that's Willow. And Willow's never alone at this time of day. The demon looks over Diedre's head, past Buffy, and grins broader.

"Aw, you guys always liked an audience, didn't you? Maybe Ripper can sing for his supper before I rip you apart." It takes a step their way, and Buffy lunges, but Giles somehow gets there first.

"Like hell you will," he says. "You want Ripper? I'll show you Ripper!" Something red glows around his raised hand, and the demon's attention is on him–

"–Don't! He said to distract it!" Diedre yells, and it turns to her instead.

"What, scared Tommy'll end up like poor little Randall? You were so terribly fond of Randall."

"Damn right I was," says Diedre. "He was my friend. So's Tom." The demon laughs. Then it lunges. Diedre crumples to her knees with her hands over her ears, Buffy runs at it, Giles shouts raises his hands – there's a flash of red, and the demon rounds on the nearest person, which ends up being Buffy. It lashes out at her with an unexpectedly clawed hand, and when she jumps out o the way she smells smoke.

"Over here!" Philip shouts. He's next to the book cage, she realizes, but it looks like the demon is too smart for that because it charges him at an odd angle that avoids the cage altogether. Someone lobs a math textbook at it, and it whirls around again.

"Jenny, for heaven's sake get the students out!" Giles yells, which only serves to draw the demon's attention back to him as Ms. Calendar shoves Willow behind her. Jesse runs left. Xander runs right. Flanking it would be a good idea, but…

"Jenny, is it?" the demon asks. "You're not one of mine…" It leers at Ms. Calendar. "Oh, but you could be—such a pretty little thing." Giles breaks a chair on its back, to no real effect, as Buffy drags Ms. Calendar out of harm's way. Chuxi has a fire extinguisher, and aims that at the demon while Cordelia hides behind her and Marcie climbs a bookshelf. Willow has a book on practical magic in her hands and is trying to read aloud and watch the demon at the same time.

They keep passing the demon around for maybe five, ten minutes. The library is small, and the demon is quicker than most of them. (More importantly, she'll think later, it's not afraid. Everyone else is afraid.) Soon, too soon, Philip is injured on the floor, bleeding from a cut on his head, Diedre is crouched beside him trying frantically to keep him awake, and Giles is trying bluster through an obviously twisted ankle. The demon's stopped paying attention to anyone else entirely. Suddenly –

"Oh dear, did I miss the party?" Ethan is standing between two of the taller shelves, sleeves rolled up to reveal a weirdly-shaped tattoo. And he's smiling.

"The glass," Willow mumbles. She's taken a book to the head, and is gripping the back of Buffy's jacket for dear life. "Why's there so much glass?"

"There isn't glass!" Cordelia says hysterically. "Where's there glass? I don't see any glass—you're seeing things!"

"So much glass…"

"Will, come on," Xander pleads, but she doesn't seem like she can hear him.

"Come to join your dear old friends?" the demon almost purrs, turning towards him.

"You know me, just can't stay away." His tone is far too light for the situation. "Besides, I'm here to show this sad lot how a real sorcerer does it!"

"Does what?" asks the demon. "Dies?" And it leaps for him, all teeth and claws and rotting. "You can show them how a sorcerer dies, you cowardly, useless—" And there's an odd sound, like fingernails on–

"Glass," Willow whispers, and for a moment everything is silent, and then the sound of shattering glass fills the air. The demon seems frozen in place, then it warps, something twists, something screams, and then a man's limp body hits the ground with a dull thud and everything is silent again. The man on the ground is thin and blond and bleeding. There's no sign of the demon – or of Ethan.

Giles swears again, a bit more quietly.

"I'm calling the hospital now," says Ms. Calendar, sounding strained, then walks stiffly to the phone and does just that. It's a very normal thing to do, and Buffy feels Willow sag.

"Glass's gone," Willow mumbles. "S'okay."

"How about the monster? Is that gone?" Marcie asks. And maybe that a cue for everyone to start talking at once, yelling over each other as if they can make up for the blind fear with anger, and it's like a spell's been broken.

Ethan limps out from between bookshelves, clutching what looks for all intents and purposes like a disco ball in his arms. He shoves the thing at Giles without a moment's hesitation.

"Get rid of it. Get rid of it. I don't want it and I don't want to be holding it when I keel over."

—

Giles feeds the EMTs some nonsense story about drugs and knives, and no one really questions it. The disco ball of evil – it's actually some kind of fancy crystal, but the details sort of go over her head – gets locked in a lead box that Giles just point-blank refuses to let go of even as they're trying to load him onto a stretcher. Diedre sits in a library chair with her face buried in her hands and her whole body shaking. Ms. Calendar puts a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"You'll all be alright," she promises. Diedre raises her head, looks at her, and starts to laugh instead of crying.

"It's just so– so bloody stupid. All of it is so bloody stupid, no matter how much—" She yanks her necklace off throws it down the table. "No matter what, it comes back, doesn't it?

—

"It's a gateway labyrinth," Ethan says, a few days later, perched in a rickety plastic chair in a hospital room. "Demon goes in, and then goes around in circles forever, because each door leads to three more. It's a bit like fractals!" He looks very proud of himself.

"And you even have such a thing because…?" Giles prompts. Ethan's grin fades.

"Because Eyghon was bound to come back," he says. "And I don't know about you lot but I don't fancy dying."

"Why was it after you, though?" Buffy asks, because so far no one's told her that. Giles looks profoundly uncomfortable.

Diedre's the one who ends up telling her the story, because Giles stammers when he tries and Tom goes deadly pale and quiet and Philip keeps coming back to the fact that Randall was their friend and Ethan probably can't be trusted to tell anyone anything without embellishments.

"And Randall.." she trails off at the end. Randall isn't with them, so Buffy can put the pieces together. He's dead. They're silent for a long moment.

"We killed him," says Ethan, conversationally.

"Stop it!" Philip snaps.

"Or rather, I killed him," Ethan continues. "We couldn't think of another way to contain Eyghon, you see, so I killed him. It forced the demon out, at least. We'd have all died otherwise." He leans back in his rickety plastic chair, watching his friends, and Buffy very suddenly realizes he's lying. He's lying. Someone else in the room had dealt a killing blow twenty years ago, and creepy Ethan with his blank smile and crystal demon trap was taking the fall. She really wants to call him on it.

"Took you long enough to say it. You killed him," says Philip. "I don't know how you sleep."

"Better than some of us," mutters Tom.

"There was nothing else we could've done," says Diedre, frowning. "You know that."

"Not at the time, no," says Ethan. "And this time we all lived, didn't we?" Silent nods all around. "That's the spirit!" He swipes a silver flask from the pocket of Diedre's cardigan and takes a drink. "Now, Ripper—tell us all about that nice lady who almost got murdered visiting you at half-past-demon!" And Giles spends the next five minutes trying to articulate a sentence about Ms. Calendar.

And that's probably fine, because the crystal disco demon trap is in a lead box full of cement and stuffed somewhere mostly unreachable by one or another of Giles's less sketchy friends, but the whole scene feels wrong. Forced. They all know Ethan is lying, she thinks, but none of them are going to say it. Why would they, though? They're grown-ups now, proper adults who wear pearl earrings and tell lies. (But if Ethan didn't kill Randall, which of them did?)

Giles makes his escape soon enough, dragging Buffy by the arm and talking loudly about homework, though he does pause to tell a nurse that someone's been sneaking in contraband alcohol. It's an aggressively Giles thing to do, and she's a bit relieved to hear it. No matter what, he's still Giles.

–

 _Author's note: I hope you aren't sick of Ethan yet, because you're getting a lot more of him._


	4. 1997-1998, Winter

_Author's Note: Hi Gatherer! Thanks for your review. I'm very glad you're enjoying this. Yes, there will be a reshuffling of people soon. Someone needs to go to LA and help the helpless, after all, and there's the whole matter of Angel's curse..._

And no matter what, school is still school. No revelations about Giles's demon-summoning drug-fueled youth are going to stop career week. It's traditional. It's practically a holiday. Buffy hates it, both on principle and because, well, she knows exactly what her "career" is going to be. She's the Slayer. She's gonna slay things all her life and then die more permanently probably before she turns twenty and definitely before she turns thirty. She doesn't need to fill in bubbles to find that out.

She also doesn't need Giles breathing down her neck constantly and being detail-oriented and petty, and she doesn't need vampire thieves and she really doesn't need to dream about stupid butterflies. Giles says it's some sort of conspiracy revolving around Josephus DuLac and it's a very big deal. Giles, right now, is stupid.

The bubbles say she should be a cop. The bubbles are also stupid. (Isn't she sort of a cop already, though?) They do stick Willow in the same room as the guy she keeps running into, though. It takes a minute for Buffy to peg him as their van-driving hero from last year, but to be fair he's changed his hair dramatically and looks like he's trying to grow a mustache.

"Hi," he says. "Nice to meet you in daylight and without any injuries."

"Yes!" says Willow. "We aren't even being chased by anything!"

(She's at school when a man carrying a suitcase runs into a woman in a pink cardigan on the street outside her house, so she doesn't hear the mumbled apologies, nor does she see the woman pick a maggot off her sleeve, frown, and take a nearby garden hose to the man. If she did see it, though, she'd term the result a bug-splosion. Pearls or no pearls, Diedre Page never really stopped being one of Ripper's crowd. You don't stop being something like that.)

—

Angel takes her ice skating, because that's a normal thing to do, and they're promptly attacked by a murderous lunatic. Because of course they are. The murderous lunatic has superpowers, because of course he does, and Buffy cuts his throat with an ice skate because she's so over murderous lunatics, you know?

But Giles says these are a special kind of murderous lunatics, the Order of Taraka, and finally comes to a point he and Angel agree on: She should get out of town while she can. (So much for law enforcement, so much for career week.) Her mom's already out of town, at least that much, at least Buffy doesn't have to worry about her. She says she'll run, smiles at Giles who looks like he doesn't believe her at all, and then goes to Angel's place. (It's as close to running away as she can fathom now. (And where else can she go? LA? Please.)

Angel's not home, so she falls asleep on his bed. It's warm and comfortable and smells like him, and she feels almost safe there. (That night she doesn't dream. Small mercies.)

So of course she wakes up to a girl with an ax trying to kill her. Of course. Of course. They wreck half the furniture before the girl with the ax even bothers introducing herself.

"My name is Kendra," she says, "the Vampire Slayer."

That's about the last thing Buffy expects, but it's just the cherry on top of the things-gone-wrong sundae. Somehow she convinces the girl to stand down and they go panicking to Giles for answers.

(Short answer: Fate hasn't quite grasped the concept of CPR.)

Kendra is everything a Slayer is probably supposed to be. She even reads Giles's dusty old books. Buffy wants to hate her on principle, wants to like her on principle, and ends up feeling annoyed and confused and left out when Kendra and Giles laugh about some historian she can't even pronounce.

At least Kendra didn't kill Angel. He's just missing, a little, but everyone's sure he's fine so Buffy's free to…be forced into attending the stupid career week. Principal Wood says things about keeping up appearances through clenched teeth while Giles awkwardly tries to explain away the spare superpowered teenage girl.

Maybe it's not so bad, though, having Kendra around. Maybe Kendra could do the slaying and Buffy could just do the Buffy-ing going forward. She runs the idea by Willow, who smiles a lot and nods.

"But not forever, right?" Willow says hesitantly. "The Disneyland?"

"Not forever," Buffy agrees. "It would get boring after a month. But still, there are other things I could do. Career day things. I could even be a normal girl." Normal girls do what their principals tell them to, so she resigns herself to a boring hour at the donuts and brutality booth. And then the woman giving the presentation tries to shoot her.

Because the Slayer can't even have a stupid career week session without attempted murder happening, right? Right. Oz gets shot, Kendra kicks the assassin's gun out of her hand and clocks the woman on the head, but it's not enough. The assassin still escapes.

—

Angel is very not okay, because he's being used as a sacrifice for Spike's stupid restoration murder ritual. She and Kendra beat the location out of the stupid sleazy bartender, and then Kendra decides that it's time to report back to Giles, as if this is the moment to stop being all attack-mode. Fine, whatever. She lets Kendra leave, and promptly walks into a trap.

Like an idiot. The sleazeball hands her off to the Taraka gang— she recognizes the woman from career week, but there's also a few vampires, a sort of greasy man in a neat suit, a pair of creeps in cloaks. One of them keeps humming as they drag her to their destination. She gets the impression that they don't work together for good reason.

She's coming up with some half-baked plan to turn them against each other when the humming abruptly cuts out. The bartender winces at the sight of whatever's going on behind her, but the assassin pinning her arms, the one who had pretended to be a cop, is keeping her from turning.

"You three, uh, coming with us?" the bartender calls. Oh. Looks like they're down both cloaks and the greasy guy.

"Nope!" says a voice that belongs without a shadow of a doubt to creepy Ethan. "You're welcome to stay a while and watch if you like." (She's going to kill him.)

"Not every day you dismember a maggot man for bits," adds a woman she's pretty sure is Diedre. One of the vampires looks dubious.

"So we'll be going, then," the fake cop says.

"Have fun at your murder event!" says creepy Ethan cheerfully.

"Right," says the bartender.

They drag her to the church, where Angel is being dangled from the ceiling and slowly drained of his life force. There's no way she's letting that go through, not even if she has to fight Spike and the entire Order of Taraka herself.

Only she doesn't have to do that, because Kendra arrives with the cavalry, right in the nick of time. Fighting back to back with another Slayer is something else, and that's just about the moment she decides she likes Kendra after all.

They drop a burning church organ on Spike, and save Angel, and get out okay. It's all okay, this time.

She wants to hug Kendra goodbye before she leaves, but more than that on some level she wants Kendra not to leave. It's like… well, she's an only child, but she's pretty sure this is what sisterhood feels like, she's pretty sure having another Slayer is like having a sister, and she's never wanted to have and keep a sister more than now.

But Kendra gets in a taxi to the airport and flies back to Jamaica, and Buffy goes home to her mom, who's back from her business trip, and to and art pieces and storage rooms. Her mom suggests some Summers Women Bonding Time, and that's really something she can get behind.

—

Buffy doesn't like her mother's new boyfriend. The problem's not that he's her mom's boyfriend, even though okay, that part of the problem. He's creepy. No, creepy's not even the main thing. She's dealt with creepy. There's just something really wrong with the guy. She can't put her finger on how, at first, but at least Willow's on her side. They investigate and turn up nothing wrong but something is wrong. Something's very wrong, even if it's just a human sort of wrong. He hits her. She throws him down the stairs, and it's mostly an accident but only mostly. He's dead, and it's upsetting how not upsetting it is. It doesn't feel real.

"He was a person," she tells Willow and Xander. "And I killed him." The words hang in the air. She killed a person. As long as she thinks it like that, she feels guilty. The rest of it, the investigations and Giles stammering something protective at police officers and people in the hallways staring, all of that makes her feel…something else. She's not sure what feeling-word goes with the voice in the back of her head screaming wrong, wrong, they're all wrong.

And then he's not dead, and that makes thing both better and worse, because he's not human, because it wasn't real. He's actually a robot. Who the hell managed to build a robot that lifelike anyway? Willow says some of the boys from the science club would be able to, probably, but it's not like Warren was around in the 1950s. Warren's like, twelve. (Okay, he's fourteen, but he's like, twelve.)

So she kills Ted twice and yells at everyone, and is really really relieved that she was right about him.

(And then she walks in on Giles and Ms. Calendar kissing? Which she's just totally not going to think about ever.)

—

There's a health class project about babysitting eggs. The eggs are evil, because Sunnydale is on a Hellmouth and everything sucks. There's also cowboy vampires, and an evil egg eats one of them. She's pretty sure that's not a metaphor for parenthood on any level.

—

She has nightmares about dying. She has nightmares about Angel dying. She has nightmares about being chased by stupid butterflies while wearing that stupid dress from creepy Ethan. She has nightmares about watching Angel die while she's stuck in that stupid dress and those are probably not prophetic because she's never wearing that thing again. The one where Drusilla kills Angel at the Bronze feels like a bit more like prophecy, so she takes it to Angel.

She doesn't get an answer, really but she gets kisses that make her skin feel like it's on fire and her world go blurry at the edges before he runs off. He promises her a birthday surprise.

Oz asks Willow out. Cordelia and Chuxi aggressively try to out dance each other. On tables. Xander tries to join them and breaks the table. Just a quiet night at the Bronze, after all.

—

The next morning, her mom won't let her drive even though she's old enough and she runs into creepy Ethan in the school hallways. He looks angry, and brushes past her without even saying anything snippy. (He's clearly not been to see Giles, because Giles is buried in his books again and not furious or rambling, but it's her birthday, so creepy Ethan can be tomorrow's problem.)

Ms. Calendar intercepts her on her way to training after class, claiming a change of plans, so the two of them go on a birthday vamp hunt. The vamps even give her a present (sort of), in that they have a box of something and she kicks their butts and takes it away from them. She recognizes one of the vampires, actually, a skittish guy in glasses who stole DuLac's cross and works for Spike. She's grappling with one of the others when they crash through a wall and clean into a surprise party that Willow and everyone actually managed to keep secret for several days. (Good for them!) She stakes the vamp on Oz's drumstick.

"We've got to stop meeting like this," he says.

"Oh yeah, for sure," she says, brushing vampire dust off her knees and wondering if she's ever going to have a quiet birthday.

The box she took from the vampires contains an arm that tries to kill her on sight. Angel pries it off her neck and he and Giles tell the story of the Judge, which blah blah blah extinguish humanity blah blah apocalypse. The pieces need to be taken to the ends of the Earth.

"Angel should go," says Ms. Calendar. "I'm sure he's the one with the most experience in such matters." Angel nods shortly and agrees.

Just like that. He just volunteers to drop everything, leave her, and take off to who knows where. And it's even for the greater good, so begging him to stay would be selfish and wrong but she so wants to be selfish and wrong. She's just turned seventeen and she wants her boyfriend and a party and to drive, not this.

"I'll drive you to the docks," says Ms. Calendar, as if this is a completely normal thing, and they take the murder arm and pile into her car, only to find a man in the front seat. It's Ethan, because of course what this day needs is Ethan.

"Dear me," he says, "And here I was thinking we had a deal."

"A deal?" Buffy half-yells at him. "What kind of deal?"

"Everything's moving too fast. We have the Judge's arm," says Ms. Calendar. Ethan frowns.

"In that?"

"No, in my pocket. What do you think?" Oh god, they're in cahoots.

"I'm going with him!" Buffy says frantically, because there's about a hundred things she wants to say including 'Giles, help!' and none of them are really coming out of her mouth right now.

"Don't be stupid," says Ethan. "I mean, go ahead and be stupid, but don't be dangerously stupid. There's a difference. I'd know."

"There's a curse," Ms. Calendar begins, oddly quiet.

"Please," says Angel. "Let's just… just get this thing out of here."

"Isn't there another way? Can't it be destroyed, or– or something?" She looks between Ms. Calendar and Ethan, but Ms. Calendar shakes her head.

"It can't be destroyed," says Angel.

"And 'within spitting distance of the rest of the pieces' is not the ideal place for experiments," Ethan adds lightly. "So say your goodbyes now."

"I can go as far as the docks," she says.

"It will be quicker if you don't," Ethan replies.

Angel kisses her in the parking lot behind an abandoned warehouse and gives her a ring and a promise to come home to her someday, and then he gets in the car and the three of them leave while she sits on the ground and cries. Giles comes out and sits with her, so she cries on him. It's probably better than crying alone. Willow brings her cake and apologies, and soon the whole party is sitting with her and she's wrapped in Giles's jacket and she still wishes more than anything that she could have Angel there.

—

(She's not there to see Ethan cast a glamour that settles over the whole car and makes Angel look like someone not worth noticing, and she's not there to see Angel slip onto a ship bound eastward, and she's not there to Ms. Calendar freeze up when she's cornered by a bespectacled vampire while Ethan grabs the creature by the arm and cheerfully talks shop until the ship out of range. All she knows is that Ms. Calendar comes back and Angel is gone, gone to the ends of the Earth.)

—

She dreams about Angel standing in fire. There's a girl standing beside him holding a sword, a girl who has Ms. Calendar's cheekbones and dark, curly hair.

"You'll have to suffer for it," says the girl. "There's no other way."

"I know," says Angel. "But at the end of the day, there's night."

"And at the end of the night, there's day," says the girl. Angel nods and holds his hands out over the flame.

"But I'll burn in daylight, unless I'm far, far away…" The fire sparks, leaps, and the sparks have butterfly wings.

—

"He had to go," says Ms. Calendar the next day, at school. "I'm sorry, Buffy, I really am, but there wasn't any other way to do it."

"Don't talk to me," she mutters. "Just leave me alone."

She spends three days trying to think of another way out, any other way out, no matter how hopeless it is now that Angel is gone, but she can't. And the worst part is that she knows she can't, she won't be able to, but she wishes that if she just thinks about it long enough she'll find the ideal loophole.

She's in the library with her head in her arms and her jacket over her head because she doesn't want to go home but doesn't want to go train and doesn't want to talk to anyone when she hears Ms. Calendar and Giles talking in low voices.

"–need to tell you something, Rupert," Ms. Calendar is saying, in an odd, strained tone.

"Oh? I – um, that is – you can tell me, well, anything you need."

"It's about Angel," says Ms. Calendar. Buffy sits up. She can hear them, but she can't see them. "And it's about me too. My real name is Janna Kalderash."

"Oh," says Giles. "Oh, you're from the Kalderash clan."

"Yes," says Ms. Calendar, and, haltingly, tells the whole story.

After that, Buffy comes at her fists flying, yelling at her, at Giles, at her ancestors, anything she could think of, but she's so tired of all of this that she doesn't get all slayer-punchy as much as teenage-girl-punchy and ends up beating her fists on Giles's chest in a way that would leave minor bruising at worst.

(They all come away from that conversation in various states of anger and despair, but it doesn't last. It can't last, because painful as the truth can be there's something somewhat liberating to it. She can't loophole her way out of Angel having to leave, but surely there's a loophole in the curse that can be exploited later. Ms. Calendar smiles when she's asked that, and says there probably is. It's other people's magic, after all.)

 _Author's Note: Because, you know, it's hard to have an everyone lives with Angelus running around._


	5. 1998, Winter and Spring

_Author's Note: Thank you for your review, Judy! I very much try to make my writing clear and understandable. :)_

Angel's absence hurts anyway, and not talking about it makes it hurt worse. (Staking things helps, but only so much.) After a week and a half of it, though, she finds herself sitting alone with Willow instead of with the whole group, and she doesn't quite understand when it happened. Cordelia is holding court with her friends (or are they minions?), Xander and Chuxi are sitting with Jesse and Marcie and trying to out-soppy each other or something (it hurts to look at), and Oz is off doing band things so it's just her and Willow now. And Willow's brightly colored overalls-and-sweater getup.

"There has to be a way to change a curse, right?" she says. She's been replaying everything she knows about the Kalderash curse over and over in her head for ages now.

"Uh-huh," says Willow, nodding earnestly. "Yeah, definitely! Only... well, it would take magic-doing, wouldn't it?"

"Well, yeah," says Buffy, and hears Ms. Calender's voice in her head saying 'other people's magic.' "But like, we can do that, right? There's people who can do that, right?" Willow nods again, smiling brightly.

"Definitely!" she says. "I… Ms. Calendar says there's lots of, um, lots of good witches and people like that who definitely aren't evil, you know?"

"Yeah," says Buffy. "Like that. And then we can get Angel back."

(She's at home moping and playing with the ring Angel gave her that afternoon, so she doesn't see Willow sitting alone at the Expresso Pump with a massive reference book of curses. She also doesn't see creepy Ethan slip into the seat opposite hers, slide her a strawberry danish, and ask whom she's planning to curse, nor does she hear Willow explain that she's trying to change a curse, not break it, that she just wants to help, she just wants to make her friends happy. In fact, no one pays any attention to the booth or its occupants for hours, not even when Ethan starts levitating his coffee cup and pulling folders full of translated spells from his bag.)

—

Giles, somehow, is on a date at 2 pm on a Tuesday. Willow is teaching Ms. Calendar's afternoon classes. There are detailed instructions for book-finding taped to the library door. Everyone thinks this really funny. Buffy is equal parts endeared and annoyed, because well, good for Giles taking a break from being a stuffy Watcher, but on the other hand what if she needs her stuffy Watcher for something while he's off doing old people date things with Ms. Calendar? Who's she supposed to ask if a demon falls out of the ceiling or something? (What's she supposed to do alone?)

Still, she finds herself in the library after school because it's become routine by now. Willow's there, on the phone and taking notes.

"Uh-huh!" Willow says, nodding her head so much her hair flops. "Yeah, okay that—Oh, that's probably bad, isn't it…" She pauses, listening intently. "Okay! I know where that is!" Another pause. "Yeah, definitely. I promise. I'll make sure–" She cuts off abruptly when she catches sight of Buffy. "Oh! Buffy's here! Hi Buffy! Hold on– I– uh-huh?" She bounces in place apologetically. "Yeah, okay! I'll– oh, okay. Bye!"

"Hi," Buffy says lamely. "That sounded exciting?"

"Oh," says Willow for what feels like the millionth time in two minutes. "It's… well, I, um…" It's Malcolm all over again, Buffy thinks for a moment, and some of that must show on her face because Willow seems to forcibly override her stammering. "S-Spike's not dead!"

"I– What?"

"Spike's not dead, I– he– a… a contact says that he and, and Drusilla are still around, and that means he's not dead and that's really bad!" Her brain skims right over everything except bad-guy-not-dead-bad, because she's the Slayer and that's what she does. Giles does the thinking, not her.

(That's not true—she's got a mind for the immediate, that's all, less for long term plans and more for snap tactics and spotting and exploiting an enemy's weakness as she moves. She can learn the longer game, she will learn it eventually, but she'll never be at home in it.)

"Okay," she says. "So where is he?" Willow gives a helpless little shrug.

"Wherever he…vampires from… I guess," she mumbles. "Underground?" Buffy glares. Willow fidgets with her necklace. "I have a tracking spell, but we don't really have anything of his to track, so I can't use it, and I– I've never even tried it but I'lll go with you patrolling tonight so I can help and if we see him you can do with the stabby?" She rocks up onto her toes. "Oh! Or we could you know, um, take something. I could track him then…!"

"Did you just suggest we rob the vampires?" Buffy asks, because Willow is looking so proud of herself that she can't quite believe what's come out of her friend's mouth. Not that she's not one hundred percent behind the stabby and the stealing if need be, but it's just… it's Willow suggesting it. That's just weird. Willow's eyes go wide.

"It's um, it's a stupid idea, right?"

"No, no. It's an idea I can get behind. Just wanted to make sure that's what you were actually trying to suggest." Yeah, that's a plan that they're not going to run past Giles for sure. She can just hear him. Buffy, be reasonable. Willow, that's dangerous. Buffy as your Watcher and a member of the faculty I am obligated to tell you blah blah blah. She's the Slayer, she's the one out in the field doing with the stabby, dang it, she doesn't need dad-mode and lectures.

(She likes Giles, she really does, but sometimes she's just sort of tired of it all. Maybe Ms. Calendar will be a good influence. Or technically a bad influence? Whichever. Giles has to have a setting between stammering librarian and dark magic time bomb, right?)

"I don't need anything big, I promise!" Willow is saying excitedly. "I read that a– a powerful sorceress can cast that spell from a single thread! I don't think I can do that, though, I think I'd need a bit more than that but still…"

"More than a thread," says Buffy. "I gotcha!"

—

They don't find Spike while on patrol, but they do put down two of Spike's minions, which is a good sign probably. The third one they run into, Buffy pins to a gravestone.

"Where's your boss?" she asks. The vampire growls at her.

"Ooh, an interrogation!" says Willow with the same tone she uses for ooh, a research party. "I read something about this…" Buffy hears the rustling of paper and wonders, vaguely, if Willow's come patrolling with notes. It's possible. She slams the growly vamp's face into the gravestone.

"Talk or you're dust, it's really not that complicated," she says. Well, he's dust anyway, but it sounds cool to say.

"Uh-huh!" says Willow, pausing the paper-rustling. "We've got holy water and crosses and things, and Buff's gonna use them if you don't tell her right now!"

"Liar," says the vamp.

"Buffy, the thing, the you can—" Willow starts, but Buffy really doesn't need to be told twice. She's got a cross in her pocket and presses it against the side of the vamp's face. He screams. Willow yelps.

"Your boss. Spike. Where is he?" Buffy says. This time the vamp talks.

(They don't end up finding Spike or Drusilla, but they find a locked crypt and a scrap of lacy fabric that Willow thinks will do fine for her tracking spell, and at least now Buffy knows where to ramp up patrols.)

—

She dreams she's chasing Drusilla through a forest. Branches catch on her arms and in her hair, and no matter how hard she pushes herself she can never close the distance between them.

"Just keep running!" Willow urges. "I've got a spell for this in here somewhere, and as soon as you catch her we can save the world!"

"How?" she asks. Dream Willow laughs.

"You're the Slayer, silly! It's what you do! Besides, there's always the swirling vortex of terror!"

(She wakes up from that one really confused.)

—

Something is roaming Sunnydale by night killing animals. Giles thinks it's a werewolf. He thinks werewolves are cool (or rather, he thinks they're fascinating). Ms. Calendar doesn't think they're cool at all. She doesn't like the idea of a person not being in control of their own body. That, at least, puts a sock in Giles's monologue about the interesting variations in mythology.

They learn self defense in gym, and Buffy throws a guy so hard she cracks a floorboard. Willow applauds, then when it's her turn to throw someone manages to electrify herself, the mat, Xander, and the instructor.

"Well, that was effective, but in reality you won't always have static electricity to save you," the instructor explains, trying to tame her hair.

"M-maybe I will!" says Willow. "At least— you never know, right?"

They go in research-pursuit of the werewolf, and Buffy's the one who fits Willow's ad-hoc profile best. Next best guess is Larry, and Xander goes after him to investigate and/or threaten. (Larry is apparently not the werewolf. Xander comes back twitchy and flustered, and offers no further explanation than that.)

There's a werewolf hunter in town, with a necklace made of teeth. Buffy wants to punch his face in for the way he talks— about werewolves, who are human most of the time; about hunting; about her. Giles very nearly does punch his face in. (It's nice when they're on the same page.)

The werewolf is Oz, who doesn't seem even a little werewolf-y. Maybe that's why he hasn't hurt a person yet, Willow suggests later. Maybe he doesn't hurt people because he's gentle and nice and calm as a human being too. He's for sure gentle and nice when he wakes up locked in the book cage the next morning, and Willow hugs him tightly (after he puts pants on and everything).

"I'm so glad you're okay," she says. "Everyone was worried about you. I was worried about you."

"I promise that won't happen again until next month," he says, resting his face on her shoulder.

"And next month, I'll keep you safe," she answers. "That's my promise. Next month and every one after."

—

Apparently even Slayers get the flu, and Buffy goes down with the worst fever she's had in almost her whole life. She tries to power through it, runs into Drusilla (hey, Willow's tracking spell worked!), and barely survives. Her friends show up in the nick of time to chase Drusilla off, and Buffy passes right out before she can explain that she's fine.

She wakes up in the hospital to Giles and Ms. Calendar and her mom and Willow and Xander and Oz and Chuxi and Jesse and Marcie and even Cordelia, all looking very worried and fussing over her.

"I'm not possessed," she tells Giles very sincerely.

"I know," he tells her back and smooths her hair. "You have a fever."

There's a monster in the hospital and it kills little kids, leaves them screaming in terror as it sucks the life out of them. It killed her cousin, years before, before she was the Slayer and before she knew anything about the world. She kills it in a hospital basement with a fever of 105, and decides she hates things that prey on the innocent the most.

"That's why we have you," says Willow. "You protect people! You're like, you're like a knight, or a superhero."

"I'm Powergirl," says Buffy, exhausted. She's so woozy that everything's blurring, but that's okay because the monster's dead.

"Anything you want, Buff," Willow says, helping her lie back. "You're Powergirl." She's not sure if she's imagined the forehead kiss or not.

—

She dreams Angel is standing on a boat in the middle of a red lake. The boat has no oars, and he's looking off into the distance. On the far side of the lake stands a girl in a white dress. As Buffy watches, the girl steps into a boat of her and sits down, letting it carry her across. She has golden her done up like she's going to a fairytale ball, but she doesn't have a face, and Angel starts at the sight of her.

"You're not real," he tells her. "What are you?"

"Of course I'm real," says the faceless girl in Buffy's voice. "You of all creatures would know." But instead of passing him, she sinks into the red, red water, leaving not even a ripple behind her.

—

One day, Willow comes to school with intensely purple hair and an unexpectedly confident grin. Buffy's never seen her like that before — the confidence is weirder than the purple, because anyone can dye their hair technically but hair dye doesn't change how you move, how you smile, who you're scared of. Willow trying to look different? Fine. Willow sassing Cordelia, kissing Oz, and loudly debating a point in class? Possible supernatural shenanigans. Willow tells her over lunch that it's just a glamour, a spell meant to change your appearance.

"For practice," she explains, and she sure sounds like normal Willow. "If we have to be sneaky and stuff."

"Yeah, okay," Buffy says. "So the hair's not permanent?" Willow shakes her head.

"It's not even real," she says. "I just wanted to see what would happen, you know?"

"Spice things up a bit?" Buffy suggests, and Willow giggles.

"Too spicy?"

"Maybe ease up on the spice, just a little."

"Okay. You'll get normal boring nerdy Willow again tomorrow, promise." But Willow looks so put out about that.

"Not trying to harsh your buzz, Will," she says. "Just, you'd probably scare off the vampires looking like this." And acting like this.

"Oh no!" says Willow, eyes wide and brows furrowed. "I wouldn't want to scare off the scary monsters!" They stare at each other for a moment, and then collapse into helpless laughter.

Giles breaks a teacup at the sight of Willow, which is even funnier. She's still amused by it when she's out on patrol that night, and catches the giggles while chasing Spike's glasses minion because he's totally the type that would get spooked by Willow in her punk getup. (The vamp gets away, and she decides she's not gonna tell Giles why.)

—

The next day, Willow's hair is back to normal. Almost everything is back to normal, Willow-wise, except the big clunky combat shoes and oversized jacket. She's apparently keeping those.

"Ugh," says Coredelia. "I really think clothes should come with a use-by date." Willow rolls her eyes.

"Fashion goes in circles," she says very seriously. "Also it's comfy."

"It looks comfy," Chuxi supplies. "Old leather gets very soft."

"Uh-huh!" says Willow, and snuggles happily into her jacket. It smells a bit of aftershave, and not Oz's aftershave either. She plans to bring that up after class, but after class she sees one of the boys pull a gun on a girl and that puts everything else out of her mind.

"Don't walk away from me, bitch!" he yells, and Buffy tackles him.

—

"What happened?" Principal Wood asks calmly.

"He had a gun."

"We didn't find a gun."

"Well, maybe you weren't looking hard enough!" she snaps. Principal Wood gives her the makes-teenagers-shush look, and she makes a face and folds her arms. "It was there. He was gonna shoot her."

"I believe you," says Principal Wood, "But the point remains that we didn't find a gun, and the student in question doesn't own one."

"So, what? We've got a disappearing gun?" That sounds dumb even said half-jokingly, but Principal Wood nods slowly.

"We have a gun that no one can find in a high school built on a Hellmouth. What do you think?" he says.

"I think it's… I think it could be something weird," she says. A book promptly falls out of the bookshelf, as if on cue. She scowls and puts it back.

"When isn't it?" says Principal Wood. He doesn't sound tired. He sounds like he lives for this. "Best keep our eyes open, Slayer. The student body is relying on us."

But Mr. Reyes catches what Xander calls chalkboard Tourettes and writes DON'T WALK AWAY FROM ME BITCH across the entire board, and Xander almost gets eaten by his locker, so she takes it to Giles. Principal Wood is already there.

"Hello Buffy," he says. "I think it's a poltergeist."

"Which is a truly fascinating possibility!" says Giles. "They're actually surprisingly rare, given their prevalence in lore, so if this is one–"

"It would certainly be worth documenting," Principal Wood agrees. "If we do get confirmation that it's a poltergeist, I'd like to send the notes to my uncle. He'd eat this right up!"

"Bernard Crowley?" Giles asks, and Wood nods, chuckling. "I'd say. He was an expert on the particularly odd cases—It was a blow to the Council when he left."

"Blow to your Council, win for the common man," says Wood. "I bet I could drag him out of retirement to teach some sort of Slayer elective. At least if I bribe him with poltergeists."

But it's presumably not a poltergeist, because she comes in the next day to Giles with his hand in a bandage and Ms. Calendar freaking out telling everyone about gun control. Apparently he'd interrupted another instance of disappearing gun and gotten shot for his troubles. Willow bounces on her toes on the phone in the library, but whoever she's calling doesn't answer.

"This is awful," she mumbles as she puts the phone down.

"Tell me about it," Buffy answers. "I'm even pretty sure we're talking about the same thing."

"Giles got shot!" Willow mumbles. "What am I supposed to do if people are getting shot? That's not a monsters thing, you can kick the butts of any monsters things, but anyone could shoot Giles. I could shoot Giles." She pauses, wraps her jacket more tightly around herself. "I wouldn't shoot Giles, that would be horrible."

"Right there with you, Will. I know you wouldn't hurt a fly." Willow looks like a kid, again, and Buffy links arms with her. "Now come on. School-patrol-y-time. Also school-time."

It's a quiet morning though, outside of the gossip about the Sadie Hawkins dance. At lunch, Cordelia suggests a boycott of the whole thing, and honestly Buffy's about to be on board before all their food turns into snakes. Then she flips the table while yelling. (A snake almost bites Cordelia, but Chuxi grabs it and lobs it across the room. She's got almost-Slayer reflexes. Maybe they're a leftover from her curse.)

—

It's a ghost. A powerful ghost. Actually, technically, it may be more than one ghost given how it was a murder-suicide. Anyway and Giles and Ms. Calendar seem to have different ideas about what to do. Giles wants to talk to him (hello? disappearing gun?), while Ms. Calendar is a vote for exorcisms and possibly salting the earth.

"It is trying to kill people," she insists. "This isn't a time for empathy."

"Jenny, he's trapped. I don't think he could stop if he wanted to," says Giles, who is probably having empathy coming out of his ears at this point.

"It shot you," says Ms. Calendar, as if that's the end of the conversation, and really it sort of should be.

"Only, well, only a little," says Giles. "I've been– never mind. The point is, he's been repeating the same scene over and over. He wants a different ending."

"So all we have to do is change the story," says Willow slowly. She looks like she has an idea, but Giles just keeps going.

"Yes, precisely. No need for magic at all, you see, not even an exorcism." He offers a twitchy smile. Ms. Calendar raises her eyebrows.

"So, what? You're going to make someone not die when they're shot?" she asks. "We can't have the whole school outfitted in Kevlar, Hellmouth or not." Giles stares at her open-mouthed for a moment, and suddenly they're both grinning.

"No," he says. "Not the whole school."

Buffy volunteers to go, and even gives him the whole I'm the Slayer blah blah forces of Darkness speech, but Giles says that it's a grownup's job to protect the school, and that he's intervening now because a proper grownup didn't intervene back in the 1950s. Also because he knows where to get bulletproof vests and how to set up gym pads so that one can fall of a balcony and not get hurt. (What do they even do at Watcher school that he knows this kind of stuff?)

So he and Ms. Calendar get kitted out and go, and they're back before midnight with Ms. Calendar looking very determined, if a bit bruised, and Giles looking pale and sick.

"Ghosts solved, in case you were wondering," she says. "And they're not coming back." Giles nods silently. "And we are all going home now, because tomorrow is still a Thursday and there is only so much that coffee can do."

"No day off for murder-suicide ghosts?" Willow asks.

"Nope," says Ms. Calendar. "Not unless murder-suicide ghosts happen on the anniversary of a particularly grand piece of colonial imperialism!" That gets a brief smile out of Giles, at least.

—

It's a few days later, Giles is twitchy but okay, and they're researching slime demons to figure out what's grossing up the sewers (Cordelia is complaining about all the sports teams being awful, but everyone else is researching slime demons), when creepy Ethan bursts into the library with a box of… books? and an expression of total exasperation.

"I was out of town for a week, Ripper. A week! And I come back to find that you've managed to get yourself shot and possessed?" he complains, slamming the box of books (they are books, huh) on the table. "I don't think you can call me a bad influence anymore."

"I'm fine, thank you for asking," says Giles dryly.

"Obviously," Ethan huffs. "You're made of sterner stuff than most bloody high school librarians. Anyway, I brought you a present. First edition Kruzowski, and a translation to go with it. Also some other things but I didn't have to break a flesh-eating curse on any of those."

"A flesh-eating curse?" Willow asks.

"It would try to eat anyone but its rightful owner!" Ethan says. "Pity it got nicked around the 1400s and hasn't had a rightful owner since." He looks over at Giles, who is trying to sort the books with his still injured hand and grimaces. "Ripper, you… You have fun struggling with that."

"Here, Giles, I'll help!" Willow makes for the box excitedly, and Buffy follows suit.

"How broken is this flesh-eating curse, exactly?" Cordelia asks. "Is it at exfoliate or rip your fingertips off?"

"I'm sure it's totally broken," says Chuxi. "I mean, you can't break a curse just a little."

"Though you can kill someone with exfoliants!" Ethan calls over his shoulder as he leaves.

 _Author's Note: And up next is a two-part season finale! So there's that to look forward to._


	6. 1998, Early Summer (1)

_Author's Note: This is part one of the second season finale! I'd post it all as one chapter, but it's terribly long. Major thanks to Stormy for being the voice of Jenny._

It's remarkably nonviolent for a while, after that. She'd almost be willing to believe that Spike and Drusilla have left town, except for the part where Willow's tracking spell says that at least Drusilla is still in the locked crypt most days. And most nights, which is a problem, because she can't really fight her way through solid rock. It's annoying. She wishes she could get a bead on Spike. Drusilla isn't the wandering type, apparently.

"Huh," says Willow. "She's out tonight."

"Where?"

"Museum," says Willow. "Museums after dark. I guess that could be fun! I mean, no crowds."

"I really don't think that's why she's there," says Buffy dryly. "What's at the museum that a vampire could want?" Willow shrugs.

"Depends on what she likes, I guess," she mumbles. "Artifacts? Art? Mr. – I've heard there's a neat suit of armor they brought in recently, it's um, part of a traveling exhibit."

"Relevant to vampires?" she presses. Willow tends to get distracted by things even more lately. She'd spent almost six hours researching cat worship in history one time, and another time she'd been looking at medieval heraldry. Cool armor could just be the latest focus point.

"Probably not," Willow admits. "It belonged to a lady knight, that's why it's a big deal, but someone'd know if she was a Slayer, right? The documentation just said an unknown lady knight from England in the 12th century!" Willow grins. "So, really cool, but not really vampire- related."

—

Giles doesn't know if there was a Slayer in the 12th century who wore armor.

"Records from the era are, are spotty," he explains, "And, well, even if we had them, it would be quite a task to link a name to a suit of armor." But he still suggests a field trip, because Giles

gets as excited about museums as Willow does. It's an investigation, not a field trip, he promises, but it's totally a field trip. They bring the whole group along. (At least there's no chance of Chuxi seeing her old sarcophagus. That's in France now, according to Giles.)

"So, what are we researching?" Ms. Calendar asks, as she bills all their tickets to the school. "Anything specific, or is this just for fun?"

"There's a vampire hanging around here after dark," says Buffy. "We're trying to find what she's looking for."

"Also, museum!" says Willow. Ms. Calendar laughs and takes Giles by the arm.

"Also museum," she agrees. "Let's make the most of the investigation, then, shall we?"

So they do. Willow drags everyone to look at the armor, which is pretty and for a girl a good six inches taller than her. Giles says there's insufficient documentation to prove anything about Slayers, but he's sure whoever wore it wore it to battle: there are marks and nicks on it where the wearer took hits.

The museum has olds weapons in it too, which Giles gets incredibly excited about. Okay, that she can get behind. Old fancy stabbing devices. Well, there can't be old fancy stakes, she supposes, they'd break down or degrade to the point where they'd just look like sticks. Even the knives and swords and things look like they're breaking down at the edges, for the most part. It's sort of sad, in a weird way, seeing weapons that really can't be useful anymore. She doesn't much like seeing all these old things.

Giles and Ms. Calendar seem to know half of everyone who works there, and Ms. Calendar gets distracted by a geologist who has pulled up a gigantic rock with some sort of weird symbols on it. She frowns over it and promises to call in her big guns. Later on, she says the big guns are her uncles, who are expert in demonology.

"Really?" Giles asks, visibly excited. "Fascinating! I should like the opportunity to see some of their work myself."

"Oh yeah," says Ms. Calendar dryly. "Don't forget to mention we're dating and show them the mark of Eyghon. They'll love that." Giles sort of chokes.

—

But the problem is, there's nothing vampire-worthy at the museum. There's the rock, which gets stashed somewhere secure until Ms. Calendar can send in her uncles, and artifacts with lingering spells, but nothing that would draw any more attention than it should. Most of the stuff is proper museum-quality old things. (Maybe Drusilla really does just want to visit. Maybe she just has Willow taste in old stuff. Probably not, but maybe.) Giles does double back to the armor, though, so that's something.

"I imagine she was quite, quite a warrior," he says. "Slayer or not." "Kinda wish she still had a name," says Buffy. Giles smiles ruefully.

"Yes, indeed," he says. "I imagine she does, somewhere in some record, but we have no way of connecting her to this or the other way around."

"Maybe she was a Slayer, after all," says Buffy suddenly, as the thought comes to her. "Here's her armor, but no weapon. If she used wood..."

"Well, yes," says Giles. "Maybe." It's a good thought. She likes it. Maybe the girl who wore that armor was a Slayer too, something like a sister from centuries past.

—

Never a quiet night on a Hellmouth, they say. Well, maybe they don't say, but they should. She gets vamps with swords, and a brief glimpse of Drusilla dancing through a graveyard, and nearly gets run over by Principal Wood who is also out after dark hunting. He's apologetic and shoots a sword-vamp out of the air when it tries a surprise attack.

"They're more organized than usual," she says. "Not really Spike's style." "New boss in town?" Wood suggests.

The next morning they have proof of that, because Kendra turns up on the library doorstep with her lucky stake and a warning from her Watcher.

"They see everything," she says. "The Three. And they are coming for what they seek."

"And they seek what, exactly?" Buffy asks.

"That, I was not told," Kendra admits. "Possibly, Mr. Zabuto was not sure."

"There's a lot of threes, though," says Willow sourly. "Threes happen a lot! What three even are the Three?" Kendra shakes her head.

"I am sorry. I was just sent here to prevent them from getting what they wanted," she says. "A task which would be most difficult even if I knew all the details."

"Well it doesn't help!" Willow snaps. "If he sent you to help, he should have told you something useful, not Three somethings want something and that's terrible!"

"It is not my doing that Mr. Zabuto's visions have limits!" Kendra shoots back. "Anything further than what he does, that is black magic!"

"Well if black magic gives you names and dates then sign me up!" Willow yells, standing up to try to get in Kendra's face. It's not all that effective, because she comes up to Kendra's shoulder and also Buffy pulls her back.

"Willow, what's gotten into you?"

"The Watcher's Council has decreed–" Kendra begins, and then Giles intervenes hurriedly.

"Yes, well, the Watcher's Council can't put a stop to this, so let's leave them in England, shall we?" He shoots Willow an uncomfortable look, "And it is highly unlikely that the dark arts would give Mr. Zabato or anyone else more specific visions, so let's leave those where we found them as well." Willow wilts.

"Sorry. I just– everything's in threes! How are we supposed to find this particular set?"

"Through research," says Giles. "We may be on a Hellmouth, but not every single supernatural Three is going to be operating here at the same time. We– we're certain to find them."

—

They don't find them. Willow's right this time, there are endless amounts of Threes to contend with, and they all want things. Buffy falls asleep on her books and dreams...

She dreams she's wearing her Halloween dress on a balcony, gazing out over red, red water. She hears footsteps beside her, and turns to see someone dressed in the armor from the museum.

"Lady Slayer," a woman's voice says, "You cannot linger here."

"They're coming, though," Buffy says. The armored woman turns to look out over the water as well. "Over the lake, over the sea."

"They always are," the armored woman says. "The wicked ones always come, and the likes of you and I will always stand against them. That is how it is written."

"Who wrote it, though?" Buffy asks. If it's written down, Giles should have it. Giles should have it so that he can read it.

"Not 'who,' precisely," says the armored woman. "It has been written by that which is." There's a gust of wind that sends her skirts billowing, and the armored woman reaches out to steady her. She's unarmed, Buffy realizes distantly. She should be armed.

"And the Three?" she asks. "Are they part of what is written?"

"There are many Threes," says the armored woman. Buffy huffs.

"Well, yeah, but one's coming my way now. Little help?" The armored woman laughs. She actually laughs. It's a really human kind of sound to have come out of a doomy old helmet.

"You cannot kill them, but you can fight them. You will never end them, but you can stop them. Do you see, Lady Slayer?" She raises a hand, and Buffy looks out at a boat coming over the water. Three figures stand in it: two men and a woman, dressed in neat suits. "They're coming for what their Masters want. Now, before they arrive, wake up."

—

That night, instead of patrolling the graveyards like she should be doing she lingers by the museum, thinking about red water and old armor. Slayer Dreams, she thinks, should come with subtitles. Besides, Kendra's taking the graveyards. She tenses when she hears footsteps, and spins around ready to attack, but no, it's just Ms. Calendar coming down the path.

Just Ms. Calendar, at 11 at night, walking very purposefully towards the museum with a kerchief wrapped around her head. Wait, what? Fashion faux pas much? She sticks the stake back in her pocket and sneaks closer, as silent as she can.

Ms. Calendar comes up to a window, looks around, and pulls something from her purse — whatever it is gives off a faint lilac glow — and begins to murmur something in a language Buffy doesn't recognize. The glow gets... not exactly brighter as much as bigger, bringing with it the scent of some kind of flowers. It spreads, shimmers, and then it's gone (only not really gone, she knows, because she's been the Slayer for long enough to know the basics of how magic works). Ms. Calendar stuffs the whatever back into her purse and turns around quickly, and Buffy is about to step out and intercept her when someone else beats her to it.

"Excuse me, ma'am?" It's a woman's voice, warm and rather deep. Ms. Calendar jumps anyway.

"Who's there?" she calls. The other woman is young, or at least young-looking, with brown hair done up in a ponytail and a college sweatshirt.

"Sorry," says the college girl. "I didn't mean to spook you." Her voice doesn't match her look, Buffy thinks. She doesn't like it. The girl's probably human, or at least she's not setting off the Slayer Alarm, but Buffy doesn't like her even a bit. "Just thought it'd spook you more if I just appeared out of shadows without saying anything..."

"Well, you're not wrong," says Ms. Calendar. "It's late, you probably shouldn't be walking around alone. Never know what's out there."

"And yet, here we are," says the college girl. She sounds amused, and it's the creepy kind of amused. "Both of us."

"I work here," Ms. Calendar lies smoothly. "What's your excuse?"

"Just got into town," says the college girl. "Wanted to get the lay of the land before my idiot boyfriend could get us lost tomorrow." Also a lie, probably. Just as smooth. "You work at the museum? My boyfriend's studying archeology. You know, ancient societies, hunter-gatherers."

"Good for him," says Ms. Calendar. "I'm under Eastern European antiquities."

The college girl prompts her a bit more, and Ms. Calendar talks about Russian pottery with a straight face, and the two of them walk back to the street and the lights and living things. Ms. Calendar draws the girl a map, walks right past her car, and slips, somehow, into a locked apartment building. Buffy waits in the shadows for several minutes until her teacher reappears.

"Buffy? Is that you?" Ms. Calendar asks. So much for sneaky. Also, so much for chatting.

"What's with the museum-creeping?" she asks. Ms. Calendar looks cagey. "No, seriously. If you secretly know what's going on again–"

"I don't," Ms. Calendar assures her. "Not exactly. The demon they pulled up–" What. "–seems to be sealed pretty securely–" What. "–and I had a spare warding spell, but..." She frowns, pauses. Buffy thinks the word "what" one more time.

"Demon?" she asks instead. Ms. Calendar's frown gets deeper. "Giles didn't tell you?" She actually sounds surprised.

"No, no Giles didn't tell me anything!"

"Well, I'm sure... Ugh." Ms. Calendar yanks her kerchief off and wads it into a ball. "They dug up a big rock with a demon in it. Even if they open it up, there's no way for them to awaken the thing. There's around three different layers of sealing happening and no way a human being could even scratch the surface."

"What about a crazy vampire or two?" Buffy asks. Ms. Calendar shakes her head slowly.

"I don't think they could make it through those seals," she says. "Not even Drusilla. I got a good look at them, and they're..." She stops again.

"Other people's magic?" Buffy supplies without thinking.

"What?" Ms. Calendar asks, distracted. "Oh. Yes, I suppose. Other's people's magic." "Who was that girl?"

"I have no idea," says Ms. Calendar, and Buffy believes her. "I've never seen her before." Ms. Calendar stares at the kerchief in her hands and picks her next words carefully. "I don't think I would want her to know my name," she says, and it's a weird thing to say and Buffy wishes she got it but she doesn't get it, and Ms. Calendar looks like she's somewhere else entirely.

She wishes Angel was there. Angel would probably know what to do, but Angel is somewhere on the Pacific Ocean (they're coming over the lake, over the sea) preventing another apocalypse. (And it's Ms. Calendar's fault, except for how it really isn't.)

"I just– No secrets, okay?" she says lamely. "I don't want any more stupid secrets that can kill people."

"I need to check something," says Ms. Calendar, like she hasn't heard her at all. "See you tomorrow."

—

She doesn't see Ms. Calendar tomorrow. Ms. Calendar doesn't come to school, and doesn't call in sick, and as soon as that's made clear Giles goes ghost-white and bolts. Buffy goes after him. Xander and Willow instantly announce they're coming too, Kendra announces that she's not

letting them rush into danger without support and then Chuxi grabs her backpack and Oz actually tries to beat them out the door.

It's a whole chain of rash decisions and panic that ends with Cordelia slamming her hands down on the table and yelling that they can't all go.

"Is anyone thinking?" she asks. "Am I the only one who's thinking? That's not normal, all of you need to be thinking!"

"Ms. Calendar is missing!" Buffy half-yells. "And she was acting weird!"

"You're acting weird!" Cordelia shoots back, then takes a deep breath. "Okay, look. Ms. Calendar is a grown up lady who's only a little weird and has a totally normal coffee addiction. Really, what's the worst that could have happened to her?"

"Vampires," says Buffy, but she's not the only one with an answer. "Demons."

"She could be cursed?"

"Evil murderbugs."

"The Order of Taraka?"

"Kidnappings!"

"That's not helping," says Cordelia.

"Cordelia, I, er, as much as I appreciate a call for calm, when someone goes missing on a Hellmouth it is cause for concern," says Giles.

"Especially when it's your girlfriend," says Cordelia, rolling her eyes.

"Now is not the time," says Giles.

"Yeah, we have to help her!" says Willow. She sounds like she's about to cry.

"Um, newsflash? Running screaming to I don't even know where isn't going to help her. Anyone tried calling her house?" No. No one has. Giles looks a bit shamefaced as he goes and tries, but is back to panicking a moment later.

"No answer?" Buffy asks.

"No line," he answers. "It's been cut."

"Maybe that is why she did not call in?" suggests Kendra suddenly, and everyone turns to stare at her. "If the phone does not work?"

"We should check her apartment," says Giles. "We–" He blinks, the resumes. "All of you should be in class." Absolutely everyone protests that.

But eventually it's just Buffy, Kendra, and Giles who go looking for Ms. Calendar. When they pull up in front of her apartment building in Giles's disaster of a car, Buffy smells smoke. Bad smoke, the voice in the back of her mind says, as if it thinks there's a good kind of smoke to smell under the circumstances. The curtains on Ms. Calendar's windows are drawn, but the door — when Giles goes to knock — is unlocked and swings open and if they weren't all smelling smoke already they definitely are now, because it rushes out the open door and fills the hallway with the weird not-wood smell, and a tuneless sort of humming and scratching.

"Jenny!" Giles calls.

"Rupert?" Ms. Calendar's voice is shaky. "Rupert, I don't think you should come in here." "Ms. Calendar, something's on fire in there!" Buffy yells.

"It's– it's supposed to be!" Giles makes a strangled noise and runs in. The Slayers follow him, and Buffy's clearly not been in this line of work long enough because what they run into is the weirdest scene she's seen.

Ms. Calendar doesn't have a lot of furniture, but she does have a ritual incense thing sitting in the middle of her living room. It's what's giving off all the smoke, and up close the smell is so strong it's almost sickening. Ms. Calendar, in the clothes she was wearing last night, is sitting on a cheap-looking couch behind it, wearing headphones that aren't plugged into anything and holding a deck of tarot cards. There's shattered glass on the floor at her feet— thick, curved pieces that make Buffy think it used to be a crystal ball. There's a phone on the floor, receiver broken and all the wires cut. Starting at the couch and spreading across the floor and up the walls is an intricate chalk design that looks like something out of a magic book (for protection, says the voice in her head), and humming tunelessly as he chalks a continuation of it on a door is creepy Ethan. He doesn't look up. The whole room feels still. Too still. She wants to knock something over, but she's scared that would make everything worse.

"Rupert," Ms. Calendar repeats. "I– I don't think..." She pulls a card out of the deck, looks at it, sets it down. Draws another.

"Jenny, what exactly is going on here?" Giles asks. He's gone from panicking to Watcher-calm.

"Don't you hear it?" she asks, then shakes her head. "You don't hear it."

"Hear what?" Buffy asks. Kendra looks like she's trying to follow the design around the room.

"They're — they're calling," Ms. Calendar says. She draws another card, holds it up, sets it aside, then continues in a whisper. "Gods, I'm not going crazy, they're calling out to us."

"What's calling you?" Giles asks. His voice is steady now, though he keeps glancing from Ms. Calendar to Ethan and back. Ethan steps back to survey the door, nods, and starts on the curtains.

"I'm not going crazy," says Ms. Calendar again. Buffy wants to believe her, she really does, but creepy Ethan and tarot cards and walls of crazy don't really work in her favor.

"Of course not," says Giles.

"Don't patronize me," snaps Ms. Calendar, suddenly sounding a lot more like herself. "I can tell you don't believe me. I'm not hearing voices." She pauses. Tarot card. "Well, I am, but they're specific voices, not in-my-head voices."

"Well, outside your head voices are always better," say Buffy, sounding much more sure of herself than she feels. "You can like..."

"If it is outside your head, we can fight it," says Kendra, who is still eying the pattern of crazy. Buffy nods.

"But what are they?" Giles asks, still Watcher-y. "What do– Can– Can you identify where they are coming from?" Ms. Calendar frowns.

"I'm trying," she says. "It's hard to..." Tarot card. "They're so loud, Rupert. They're calling." Ethan's drawing on the front door now, and Kendra edges sideways so that she and Buffy are back to back. Battle mode, huh? But there's nothing to fight in here.

"Can you tell me what they are?"

Giles and Ms. Calendar are going in circles again, and Buffy tries to tune them out. It's not helping. None of this is helping. She doesn't now how to help. Suddenly there's an out-of-place noise, the sound of something falling, and Ms. Calendar exhales sharply. Giles catches her arm awkwardly.

"Jenny!"

"Oh, it's quiet now," she whispers. "Thank goodness, I thought it would never stop." Buffy turns to the door, which now has the protective whatever all over it. Creepy Ethan is standing in front of it like he's just run a marathon. Kendra takes a wary step toward him.

"Sir?" she asks very quietly. Creepy Ethan looks at her uncomprehendingly, then looks at Buffy, then looks at Giles, then looks at Ms. Calendar with her tarot cards on the sofa.

"Oh," he says. "The cavalry."

"Here to help!" says Buffy with as much pep as she can muster. She even raised her chin for emphasis. Ms. Calendar takes a deep breath.

"Yes. Yes you are. Okay. I'm sorry, I haven't been very coherent. It's hard to think when all you can hear are screaming demons."

"Demons?" Giles prompts.

"At least one," says Ms. Calendar. "Something is amplifying a demonic summons— this way it's audible to far more beings than it would normally be. And by audible, I mean mind-numbingly deafening."

"You're the idiot who tried to scry it," Ethan mutters. "Doesn't it ever cross your mind to run away from the evil things, not stick your face directly into them?"

"Oh, like you're one to talk," says Ms. Calendar. "Whatever makes you feel better, Janna–"

"Can we please focus on the demon?" Giles asks. Ethan falls silent. Ms. Calendar carefully pulls her headphones off.

"There's more than one," she says. "At least, more than one thing was calling— I think only one was being amplified, if that makes sense?" Giles nods, even though Buffy's pretty sure it doesn't. "There's... I don't think the demon can do more than make noise. It's sealed up pretty securely, and whatever's amplifying it clearly can't undo the spells on its own. It's the other one that's more concerning. She's ... incomplete."

"And bloody annoying," Ethan adds. "It's her fault. Bloody Janna decided to contact the bloody disembodied voice and then everything got..." He waves his hand at the chalk.

"What's incomplete about her?" Buffy asks. Ms. Calendar shakes her head.

"I don't know. That's the problem. That's why I was trying to contact the spirit. I think I drew something else instead."

"The demon?" Buffy asks.

"No, no I was already hearing that. I could hear that since last night." She pauses, catches Buffy's eye. "At the museum. I do think all roads lead back there, actually."

"There was nothing present that could cause this sort of reaction," Giles mutters helplessly. "Nothing at all. I would have seen it."

"Not if it was in pieces," says Ethan. "Which is either very clever or very stupid. I honestly can't tell."

"Putting one artifact where it shouldn't be would be enough of a task," Giles says. "But multiple? The museum's security system–"

"Is still as bad as when I walked out with a floating sarcophagus," says Ethan.

"There was a girl there, last night," Buffy blurts. "Ms. Calendar was there and she saw her too!" Ms. Calendar nods.

"I don't know what she was up to, but I started hearing them after I met her," she says. "It could be a coincidence..." They end up recounting the whole thing, between the two of them. Ms. Calendar had brought a warding spell and set it too distract people from the demon rock, then the girl had shown up and been all kinds of weird (but human, she'd been human), and Ms. Calendar had lied to her and escaped (or had she?).

"There was something odd about her eyes," Ms. Calendar said suddenly. "I– This will sound even crazier, but it was like there was something wrong in them."

"There was a man in the graveyard!" Kendra interrupts suddenly. "I thought he was a vampire at first, but he was human and he was asking questions."

"Good you didn't try and stake him." Buffy can't quite resist the jibe. Kendra frowns at her. "The soul is in the eyes, Mr. Zabato says. An error in the soul is drastic."

"Drastic," scoffs Ethan. Kendra drops her gaze apologetically.

"Hey," Buffy warns. "If there's something soul-error-y going on, that's bad, right?" It has to be, because souls are good because Angel is good because he has one. "What happens when there's soul errors?" Kendra shakes her head, because apparently her Watcher never bothers to explain anything.

"I– it depends," says Ms. Calendar. "I suppose it depends on the error. If could scry properly–"

"No!" Giles and Ethan manage to say at the same time. Ms. Calendar glares (at Giles) and Ethan hides a smirk.

"No," Giles repeats, more calmly. "I... We need to research this. I need to do some research. Surely there is something–" He starts for the door, and Ms. Calendar gets up to follow before she thinks better of it.

"... I don't think I can go with you," she says. "Gods, I don't think I can walk out of here. It'll start again if I do, won't it? I don't want to– I don't–"

"Yep," says Ethan calmly. Ms. Calendar shot him a dark look.

"We'll hurry," Buffy promises. Giles wavers, kisses Ms. Calendar in just about the most awkward way possible, and mutters to himself about codexes all the way back to school.

—

Only there's a stranger in the library, and he's looking for Giles. He's a young guy, good-looking in an all-American kind of way, and Kendra practically crumbles when he looks at her. (Not that he does that for long, just long enough to get introduced to her and Buffy.) Giles is snippy with him, but the young guy's smile doesn't fade.

"I promise, Mr. Giles, I just need a little of your time," he says. He's got an odd accent, half southern drawl and half evening newscast business formal.

"My time is limited right now, as is my patience."

"I wouldn't be troubling you if my superiors didn't consider you an expert in the field of occult artifacts," says the young man. "Please. It is a matter of no small importance. Can we talk in your office?"

"My students–" Giles begins, and the young man turns and offers Buffy and Kendra a brilliant smile.

"You ladies don't mind me borrowing your librarian a minute, do you?" he asks, accent balance tilting to drawl.

"I uh, kinda do?" Buffy says, floundering for an excuse, and the library door slams open behind her.

"I've seen you before!" Oh yeah. The situation was just begging for more Cordelia. That just makes everything better. The young man quirks an eyebrow.

"Oh? I can't recall our paths crossing, Miss...?" Cordelia actually pushes Buffy aside to get to the guy and somehow manages to make him shake her hand.

"Cordelia Chase, I'm Bartholomew Chase's daughter. I didn't catch your name, but you're with those lawyers aren't you? I think the law is so interesting! And ... legal!"

"I'm very busy," says Giles. "Goodbye." And then he's gone with an armload of books. Buffy grabs Kendra and drags her off to the "demons" section, while Cordelia's flirting steadily increases in both volume and intensity.

"Miss Chase, I'm afraid I'm on company time," says the guy pleasantly, only it's the really fake kind of pleasantly that makes Buffy think of vampires. (It makes her think of the Master in particular, for some reason, of the night she died.) They can fake politeness and pleasantness and flirtingness and humanness too, only they're not any of those things really.

"Oh, I bet you get paid so much per hour," says Cordelia. Buffy grabs a book at random and flips through, looking for demons that can call out through people's brains. Telepathic, telepathic, that's the word. Telepathic attenuation, see volume four.

"You know, Miss Chase," says the guy. "It's not enough. I'm looking for a promotion." And then there's a godawful crash, and Cordelia screams.

Buffy vaults the bookshelf to get to her and she feels rather than sees Kendra charge, but they're too late. Cordelia's unconscious on the ground, and the door to Giles's office is broken, with Giles nowhere in sight. There's a broken window too, and Buffy reaches it in time to the young guy slam a car door shut. He looks back, makes direct eye contact with her, waves, before hopping into the front passenger seat.

The (shiny, expensive) car peels away, but not before Buffy sees Giles struggling in the back seat. There's a woman with him, brown ponytail, college sweatshirt, cold smile.


	7. 1998, Early Summer (2)

None of them end up going to class that day. That's not a thing you do in a crisis, and the only thing that can be more crisis that Giles kidnapped and Ms. Calendar incapacitated is another apocalypse.

"If these are Mr. Giles's most recent notes," says Principal Wood, who has more or less declared himself stand-in Watcher, "then someone is planning to release the demon Acathla and cause an apocalypse."

"Again?" says Buffy. "How many times is the world going to end?"

"And why are there lawyers this time?" Cordelia adds. "There weren't lawyers in the last apocalypse. Are there usually lawyers in an apocalypse?" Principal Wood frowns.

"Only sometimes," he says. "But if there are, it's likely to be Wolfram and Hart."

The museum's on lockdown, but someone's already run off with the giant rock of Alfalfa because there's clearly no security system. No one even knows who stole it. They'd have better luck tracking the car with the evil lawyers in it.

(Somewhere else, somewhere she doesn't see, the young man with the southern drawl sits down casually on one side of an interrogation room and smiles pleasantly at his prisoner.

"There's really no need to make this more difficult, Mr. Giles," he says. Giles stares back at him levelly. "We're asking for your help in a consulting capacity."

"I believe matters got irrevocably difficult when you kidnapped me from my place of work," Giles says coldly. The young man nods a bit sheepishly, shrugs, smiles.

"We did ask politely first, and this is a matter of great importance" he says. "But if you'd rather make this difficult, Watcher, it's fine by me.")

The evil lawyers are based out of LA, but Wood says they have to still be in town. Whether they're looking to raise the demon or do something else entirely, they came to the Hellmouth for a reason. So, Wood puts them in teams of two and has them searching the town for any signs of evil law. (He does that so Watcher-like that Xander calls him Giles, then goes very very pale and quiet.)

Buffy drags Xander, her assigned partner, to Willie's bar, where evil things tend to get drunk, but it's closed. Actually, it's shuttered, with a notice pasted to the door saying the building's condemned. A vampire nest she'd been meaning to hit is deserted. The demon that sits at the bus stop every day but doesn't really do anything so she's been ignoring it is gone. It's like something's wiped all the supernatural away, or at least just swept it further under the rug. Xander veers between panicking, trying not to cry, and complaining about lawyers.

But it's like there's radio silence over the town. No one's seen anything. No one knows anything. No one gets anything. Willow's eyes are red from tears, and Cordelia is silently hugging her arms to her chest.

New plan: They bash in the stone door of Drusilla's crypt and go from there. They get to the graveyard as the sun goes down, but this time there's no need for door-bashing. The door's open. Oh, that's not good.

As she rushes over the threshold, Buffy can hear a woman singing in a high, childish tone.

"The hare he loves the hill, the knight he loves his blood-stained sword, the lady the blood she spills…" The song seems to end there, and soon Buffy finds herself looking at a very familiar vampire. Drusilla is sitting cross-legged on the stone floor, cradling a doll and giggling.

"You," says Buffy. Drusilla blinks up at her.

"Oh, hello Slayer. Did you bring me a present? I'm so cold and lonely here. Spike brought me the loveliest thing." There's the big rock with weird markings parked in the corner of the room. It's probably still full of demon.

"Sure," says Buffy, drawing a stake. "How's this for a present?" Drusilla giggles again, looking past her at the whole group. Buffy doesn't turn, but she really hopes that someone's watching their back.

"Oh, look! It's a party! Is the party all for me? Did you come to celebrate?"

"Just tell us where Spike is and what he's up to." Buffy says. Drusilla has managed to do nothing for months on end, maybe she can keep it that way.

"Spike?" Drusilla asks, wide-eyed, then her tone goes from the ditzy little-girl voice to actual-vampire-type-thing. "Oh, you're here to see Spike. Of course."

"I'm here to stab Spike," says Buffy. "Not really a social call." Drusilla hums.

"Spike isn't here," she says, back to her usual tone. "He went and went and ooh, maybe he went far far away!" The vampire is on her feet before Buffy can blink. "That's what knights do, isn't it? They go on quests far away, and oh! Sometimes they get pretty things and bring them home. And sometimes they die!"

"Oh, he'll die," says Wood from somewhere behind her. Drusilla throws back her head and laughs.

"Maybe so, maybe," she sing-songs. "Or maybe he will ride triumphant into into into into the lovely darkness! That's what he's gone to do, you know. To fight a duel to make himself worthy." Her words hang in the air for a moment.

"Oh thank god," says Cordelia suddenly. "It shut up."

"Cordelia–" Xander begins, but Cordelia just talks over him.

"Sorry, creepy vampire girl. What was that about knights?" Drusilla stares at her. Buffy stares at her. Actually, pretty much everyone is staring at her now. "What?" says Cordelia. "Don't tell me you guys could hear her over the stupid doom whispers."

"What stupid doom whispers?" Xander asks, because if anyone has as little filter as Cordelia it's Xander.

"How many people are hearing things right now?" Kendra asks in the same tone she used for do you know the meaning of secret identity. Drusilla is humming to herself, brushing her doll's hair.

"Well right now? No one," says Cordelia. "I just told you the thing stopped."

"Ms. Calendar–" Buffy starts. Does this mean Ms. Calendar's okay now?

"Oh, there's going to be a grand duel, isn't there? All shining and clanging and guts on the floor," Drusilla muses. "They don't have to whisper anymore when someone hears them." Buffy's blood runs cold.

(She isn't there to hear an exhausted Ms. Calendar snap 'Just come in already!' to the man knocking on her door, nor is she there to see Spike take advantage of the invitation. A worn out sorcerer with no talent for battle magic is no match for him, and he throws Ethan Rayne at a wall so hard it leaves a dent before dragging Jenny Calendar from her apartment by the neck.)

(Buffy also doesn't see the next part, where Spike drags his struggling victim over the threshold, and then the struggling victim stops struggling and hits him so hard he drops her. Ms. Calendar pulls herself up, scrutinizing her attacker.

"You won't do," she says, in a cold, accented voice that isn't anything like her own.

"Oh bollocks," says Spike.)

By the time Buffy arrives at Ms. Calendar's apartment (with Kendra and Willow dragging a bound Drusilla with them) Ms. Calendar's gone and the place is trashed even worse than before. Creepy Ethan is lying on the ground bleeding from a few different places, but he stirs when Willow runs to him.

"Mr. Rayne! Mr. Rayne, what happened?" she asks. Ethan groans.

"Bloody idiot let a bloody vampire into the bloody flat."

"Ms. Calendar did?" That doesn't make sense, though. Ms. Calendar knows better. Ms. Calendar is a Kalderash, and they know all about vampires, and she's a witch (well, technopagan) so she should know all about… stuff.

"No, the bloody daughters of Bacchus. Who do you think?" He presses a hand to the side of his head and grimaces when it comes away, well, bloody. "Sorry Ripper, I did try to–" He stops. "Rupert isn't with you. Where is he?"

"Where's Ms. Calendar?" Buffy snaps.

"How am I supposed to know? Fanged wanker threw me around and didn't exactly leave a note! Rupert's your Watcher, though, you should know where you left him!"

"He got kidnapped by Wolfram and Hart," says Wood. "Can you describe the vampire that took Ms. Calendar?"

Ethan manages a solid twenty seconds of what's probably expletives in some kind of English and lurches unsteadily to his feet.

"Like hell I'll let those contract-fiends get their hands on him!" he snarls. "If they're in town, I know how to –"

"A vampire," says Wood, "has kidnapped one of my teachers. That is my primary concern. Lawyers, even evil lawyers, aren't likely to kill people."

"You'd be surprised," says Ethan, but apparently Wood's death glare works on creepy chaos sorcerers too. "I didn't get a close look. Tall bloke. Blond hair. Long leather jacket. On some sort of bloody mission, too." Wood's gaze goes ice cold.

"Spike," Buffy breathes.

"Oh no…" Willow sounds like she's going to start crying.

"Well there's no blood," says Cordelia.

"Yes," says Kendra. "That is correct. There is no blood. He took her from here, but…" But she may still be alive.

"I'm going after him," says Wood flatly, then he turns on his heel and leaves.

"And I," says Ethan, a lot less calmly, "am going to find whatever pit Wolfram and Hart's people are operating out of and rescue Rupert."

"We can, we can call the police?" says Jesse.

"I don't doubt they're in on it–"

"Mr. Rayne, please – I – we all want to find Giles–" Willow's tugging Ethan's arm frantically. Drusilla is singing again, or at

least making vaguely musical mouth-noises.

"Hey, what do these do?" Cordelia asks no one in particular, wandering over to the kitchen to look at some weird knick-knacks on Ms. Calendar's shelf.

"Stop that," says Kendra, either to her or to the increasingly loud yelling that's going on.

"Mr. Rayne, please calm down."

"We're all standing around while they could be–"

"Well Principal Wood went to do things. With a crossbow!"

"I don't think he's calming down."

"Seems chill to me."

"This isn't the time for sarcasm–"

"I beg to differ, it's always time for sarcasm!"

"Whose side are you even on here?"

"We're gonna go save Giles, though, right?"

"Ms. Calendar is–"

"I don't think murder's punk rock…"

With Slayer senses, it's deafening, and Buffy half-feels half-sees Kendra wince and turn away—Cordelia turns towards Drusilla, with her usual dumb-question-snippy-answer expression, then nods, smiles, and unties her. And Buffy's on the other end of the crowd, and Kendra's looking away, and for a split second the vagueness is completely gone from Drusilla's face, and then the face-ness is completely gone from Drusilla's face because she's vamping out in a group of panicking teenagers.

"Down!" Buffy orders, and at least everyone tenses, but Cordelia is backed against the open door with a look of blind terror on her face and Kendra's closer and Kendra's less involved, it's not her Watcher and her teacher missing so maybe she can do this better, only Drusilla is faster and stronger than any of them expects. There's shoving, yelling, Kendra waving Mr. Pointy–

The fight spills out of the apartment and into the hallway, which is suddenly swarming with vampires and one of them grabs Jesse –

"Missed us?" the vamp asks as Jesse's knees buckle. Xander charges it with a chair while screaming at the top of his lungs. There's the smell of sulfur in the air — Willow yelling in some language — and then she just focuses on the slayage. Dust, dust, avoid, dust, block, kick, hit, dust defend…

And after too long, too long, the air is thick with dead vampire and Xander is bleeding on the ground Cordelia's crying and Kendra is facing off against Drusilla at the end of the hallway, but Drusilla moves and Kendra doesn't, and there's a flash of fangs against Kendra's bare neck. Buffy throws herself forward and tackles Drusilla from her feast, weapons forgotten, but it's too late, isn't it?

It's too late because Kendra slumps to the ground, glassy-eyed and not breathing, and there's no way to get her to a hospital on time like this and Drusilla is laughing. Drusilla stops laughing when she's hit hard enough to break a human's neck. And when Buffy turns back around, her sister-Slayer is bathed is a flickering red glow and Ethan is writing something on her wrecked neck with blood. The sight turns Buffy's stomach, but Kendra is breathing again, weakly and shallowly but breathing.

"Jenny's car keys are still on her countertop," Ethan says, oddly calm. "I need to keep this spell up or the girl will actually die. Can any of you drive?" Cordelia has a twisted ankle. Oz volunteers. "Fantastic. Get the keys. Put the injured people in the car. Drive us to the hospital. Not complicated. Willow, please do something about our murderous bargaining chip and then take the Slayer and find Ripper. I don't care what the rest of you do." Buffy's hands are shaking. Willow makes a strangled noise. Oz gets up, walks back into the apartment, and comes back with Ms. Calendar's car keys.

"Okay," he says. "Hospital."

This time Willow gags Drusila with a kitchen towel and they tie her up. Marcie's remarkably good with knots.

—

Only, now there's just the three of them with no real idea where to go or what to do. Willow suggests storming the police station and blowing up City Hall, and then sort of gigglesobs.

"Only not, because it won't help, right?"

"I dunno," says Marcie.

"Maybe not with the storming," says Buffy. "But if Ethan's right, they police could be a good place to start." They don't manage to start there, though, because she's running on adrenaline so much so that she can recognize the sound of a specific engine as it rounds a corner, and if there's a competition of car against Slayer it's really possible that the Slayer will win.

That's why she jumps in front of the shiny black car while making aggressive eye contact with the evil lawyer who kidnapped Giles who is sitting in the front seat. The guy driving swears loudly and pumps the breaks and the horn at the same time, and by the time the car stops (with a furious Slayer holding the front bumper for good measure) Willow and Marcie are already halfway into the back seat.

"Hi Giles!" says Willow. "We're here to rescue you!"

"I, well, yes, thank you," says Giles. "But there may be an apocalypse afoot."

"Oh," says Willow.

"Well, get in, I suppose," says Giles. "Time to nip it in the bud."

"This isn't your car," says the guy driving, but the woman sitting next to Giles obligingly scoots over a little.

"It's a company car, Lee," she says. "And we don't get payed by the apocalypse."

"Yet," says the kidnapper in the front seat. Apparently Giles and the evil lawyers have reached some sort of truce. The girls pile in.

"Wait, where are we going?" Willow asks.

"To the beach," says the woman lawyer flatly.

"The blade of Hope was hidden underwater on the Hellmouth," Giles supplies. "With that on hand, well… We don't want that in the wrong hands. Where were you three running to?"

"To save Ms. Calendar!" Marcie blurts. "Everyone's being kidnapped!"

"Wait, which apocalypse are you trying to stop?" Buffy asks, hating that she even needs to clarify that sort of thing nowadays. There's a moment of scared silence, and then they all start comparing notes.

—

It looks a bit like this. There's an evil demon sealed in that giant rock in Drusilla's crypt, and it's projecting its will to try to someone worthy to unseal it, only there's no one worthy around, apparently, so it's a DIY dark knight thing. There's a weapon that can only be wielded by a chosen one that was conveniently stashed on a Hellmouth (this Hellmouth, because Giles and the evil lawyers all agree there are more then one). The lawyers want the weapon because reasons, Giles wants the weapon because he thinks it will complete the spirit talking to Ms. Calendar, and if she's outside the wards then Ms. Calendar is probably under the spirit's thrall.

"Well, that's interesting," says the woman lawyer mildly.

"We need to find her," says Giles, who for once doesn't seem to find a supernatural phenomenon interesting at all. "We need to find her, she can– she can be hurt. She could be…" He trails off and starts mechanically polishing his glasses while the lawyer behind the wheel guns the accelerator.

—

(Buffy's brawling with vampires and riding in a car with a witch, a Watcher, and representatives of Wolfram and Hart, so she's not there to see two figures in a sea cave and one reflection on still water. The woman stand with her hands behind her back, like a soldier. The man facing her is wary, skirting the edge of the too-clear rock pool as she watches him.

"I don't want this world to end," he says. "I like this world. You've got... dog racing, Manchester United. And you've got people. Billions of people walking around like Happy Meals with legs. It's all right here. If it ends, then what?"

"If it ends, then it was written to end," the woman replies. Her voice is clear and cold, with a formal English accent. "As it has been written, so it must come to pass. Not, I admit, that I want this world destroyed either."

"I can't stop it," the man says. "All the talk aside, lady, I can't stop it. We'll drag the world into Hell."

"You will die trying," says the woman. "This is–" She stumbles, clutches her head, and for a moment her voice changes, softens, shivers. "It doesn't have to be like this. I promise, I promise, it doesn't have to be like it's written just because someone wrote it."

"Lookit you," the man snaps. "Trying to change fate when you can't get a bloody ghost out of your head!"

"A place of duality," the woman says, cold and straight-backed again. "That is what you have found here." Something flashes across her face, and the second voice returns, shaking but angry. "And you'll just kneel down and die? At least Angelus had some pride!"

"Don't ever–" the man snarls, and takes a step towards her, his face twisting from human to monstrous. Then he stops, just for a moment.

"Coward," says the cold-voiced woman. He lunges, fangs bared, and she raises her hands to fend him off, but before they can truly come to blows a crossbow bolt catches the man in the shoulder. He lurches, off balance, and seizes his opponent by the arm as he falls, and they both collapse into the water below.

"Ms. Calendar– Jenny, can you hear me?" The shooter lowers his weapon and rushes forward. "Jenny!" His prey and the woman are struggling in water that is clearly deeper than it appears, and he sets down his weapon to offer her his hand.)

What Buffy does see, dragging Giles and running full tilt to try and outpace the evil lawyers, is Principal Wood kneeling at the edge of red, red water, trying to pull Ms. Calendar to shore while Spike flounders behind her. Ms. Calendar ignores Wood and pulls herself onto the shore, and Giles rushes to her. (But something's still wrong, wrong enough to set her teeth on edge and her hackles up.)

"Giles, be careful!" she yells, and he stops short. Not-Ms.-Calendar brushes sodden hair from her eyes and looks around.

"Don't worry, Lady Slayer," she says, in definitely not Ms. Calendar's voice. "I shan't hurt him." Giles has gone pale as death (God, she hates that phrase) still half-crouched beside the thing that looks like Ms. Calendar but isn't her. His mouth moves, but no sound comes out. Wood picks up his crossbow again, but seems less than sure where to point it – at the thing? at Spike, who is now treading water and watching the scene unfold? (At Spike, she thinks, a moment before Wood decides that yeah, that's the better option.)

"What are you?" Buffy asks the thing that looks like Ms. Calendar. "I–I saw you before. I dreamed you. Only, then you were wearing armor, not my teacher's body. Small diff." The thing laughs, and it has the same laugh it did in her dream—that oddly human one. Giles recoils, trips, and Buffy yanks him to his feet and pulls him away – out of range, she hopes, of whatever that thing can do.

"Forgive me," it says. "I do not mean Jenny any harm, but time is short and my weapon–" It cuts off, looking past Buffy, then continues in a tone that's almost Giles-y in the sarcasm-dripping. "–Ah. I see the minions of darkness pursuing my weapon have been so kind as to join us." The lawyer who had kidnapped Giles opens his mouth to argue, then shuts it after a moment's consideration.

"No chance you'll just cooperate and hand it over, is there?" asks the woman. She doesn't sound hopeful. Not-Ms.-Calendar shoots her a withering look.

"No."

"And let the record reflect it," mutters lawyer three. Let it be written, Buffy thinks. Not-Ms.-Calendar frowns. Spike manages, with some trouble, to pull himself out of the water too, on the far side of cavern. There's nowhere to run to there, so he puts his back against the wall and watches.

"The weapon is beyond you anyway," Not-Ms.-Calendar continues archly. "The Powers that Be will choose a Champion to wield it, and it will not be the likes of you."

"A champion?" Willow asks, in almost the same way she asks for extra credit assignments. "I-I don't know what that is. Is it like a Slayer?"

"Oh, sweet child," says Not-Ms.-Calendar. "Do you truly believe that your Lady Slayer belongs to the Powers that Be?"

"What?" Buffy barely recognizes her own voice. The thing turns to her, and it looks almost sad.

"This is a place of duality," it says. "You are not a child of the Powers, Lady Slayer. That is not a crime."

"Do I need to be here?" Spike asks suddenly. He's gotten the bolt out of his shoulder and is edging for the door. "Because I really could just leave you all to it and go, you see. Doesn't seem like we're getting that apocalypse…"

"You're not going anywhere!" Wood snaps, and there's a hasty reshuffling to give him a clear shot at Spike. Spike actually puts up his hands.

"Listen, mate," he starts, probably aiming for soothing but hitting the bullseye on slightly hysterical instead. "There's–"

"You walk out of here, what are you going to do? Go hunt down some other innocent? Go after someone else's mother or sister?" Wood is walking with his crossbow aimed, like he's planning on shooting at point-blank range. Which, actually, is a pretty good idea—she's gone toe-to-toe with Spike before, and he's tough.

"I–" He stops suddenly, goes almost quiet. "You're Nikki Wood's boy, aren't you?"

"Bingo," says Wood coldly. "So you'd better give a damn good reason to let you walk out of here." Spike stares at him for a long moment, throws a wary glance back at the thing that looks like Ms. Calendar, and makes a face.

"How's this one? I'll run. I'll take Dru and I'll run and none of you will ever see either of us again. This place isn't worth it. All of this?" He gestures vaguely. "This place? You can keep it– you win! It's all yours, your little Hellmouth and all the bloody apocalypses and her–" He jabs a finger at Not-Ms.-Calendar. "–and you–" That's at Buffy. "–and all of it, you can keep it, and shove it up your–"

And then Wood stabs him. The vampire gasps sharply, but doesn't disintegrate. There's a low cracking sound, and Wood steps away with a broken crossbow bold in his hand and a cold smile on his face as Spike doubles over in pain.

"Now take off that jacket," Wood orders. He's obeyed. "One step out of line, and even a child could shove that into your heart," he says.

"And there's blood on that," Willow adds, viciously cheerful. "I could make a way more accurate tracking spell with that." She almost thinks Spike is going to fight, but he just makes a pained noise and flees. The woman from Wolfram and Hart steps out of his way and taps her coworkers on the shoulders in the same movement.

"We won't get anything done here," she says.

"Our aim–" says lawyer three, but lawyer one shakes his head.

"You're right. And we have located the weapon now, after all. When we need it, we can return for it."

"It'll be here," says the woman, "or it will be with your precious host. Either way, acquiring it will be no difficulty."

"I doubt that very much," says the thing that looks like Ms. Calendar, and it stares the lawyers down until they leave. (Lawyer three tries to double back, but lawyer one grabs and drags him.)

And then very suddenly it's just her and Willow and Marcie and Giles and Principal Wood in a cold, dark cave with the thing at the water's edge, and Wood looks exhausted and Marcie is hugging herself and Willow has half a blood-stained crossbow bolt and Giles is standing very still with no expression on his face at all and his eyes fixed on the thing that looks like Ms. Calendar. Buffy feels like she's looking down at them all from above, or at least from outside. She can almost see herself, all messed up hair and she liked those sneakers, holding onto Giles's arm. (She's not a child of the Powers. Whatever that means.)

"They are gone now," says the thing, and it's almost human in its relief. Behind it, the red water slowly turns clear (again, it turns clear again, this is its natural state).

"Big whoop," Buffy says flatly.

"There's no need for that, Lady Slayer," says the thing that looks like Ms. Calendar. "I am not your enemy. You and I, we both stand in the doorway."

"You're wearing my teacher as a meat suit," says Buffy. "I don't like you." It laughs at her. It laughs and she wants to stab it and Willow makes a strangled little sobbing sound.

"Let her go, please," says Giles, very quietly. "Let her go before you hurt her."

"Then catch her, Watcher," it answers, and a matter of seconds later Giles in on his knees half-hugging half-cradling Ms. Calender at the water's edge while she clings to him and mumbles something incoherent and only half in English. She's pretty sure Giles is crying, and Marcie flails a little and latches onto Principal Wood and his crossbow.

Buffy's legs move of their own accord to the water's edge on the far side of the weird pool thing. The water's completely clear now, and she wonders where the blood has gone. No sign of it, just the clear water and her own reflection. Only…

The figure in the water is a blonde woman with light eyes, but that's where the similarities end. She's tall and wiry, and her long hair is braided down her back while Buffy's hangs loose. As she watches, the reflection smiles sadly.

'Bad times are coming, Lady Slayer,' she whispers. 'And there will be need for guardians in the gate.'

And then the world goes all blurry, and the last she remembers of the night is sinking backwards into someone's arms.

—

But she wakes up okay. She wakes up to all of them being okay. Xander is bruised and twitchy and Ms. Calendar is pale but definitely herself, and Kendra has a bandage around her neck and bags under her eyes, but they're alive and Giles for lack of any other thing to get angry at calls Kendra's Watcher in Jamaica and yells at him for a solid ten minutes.

The sunlight through the hospital windows is really bright, her friends and teachers are okay, and there's no sign of evil lawyers either, so there's no reason her her to feel odd and cold when her mother hugs her, and there's no reason to dream about butterflies the color of blood and the cold, accented voice of the woman in the water.

You are not a child of the Powers, Lady Slayer. But bad times are coming, and there will be need for guardians in the gate.

—

Buffy's mom is actually more aware of things that she thought. At the hospital she greets everyone by name and dispenses mom-ish hugs where appropriate. She doesn't know Kendra, and she knows she doesn't know Kendra instead of writing her off as just another classmate the way Willow's parents had.

"Are you another transfer student, dear?" she asks. Buffy, standing behind her mother, nods. Yes, sure, transfer student. Kendra stares shyly at her hands.

"Yes, ma'am," she mumbles. Her voices still sounds rough, but she's recovering.

"Do your parents know you got hurt? Has someone called them? I know everything has happened so quickly…" But Kendra doesn't have parents, not real ones. She's probably got parents somewhere, genetically speaking, but she doesn't have parents-parents.

"Mr. Giles called Mr. Zabuto," Kendra says, and Buffy sees her mother frown the way she did when Xander said his parents weren't coming to see him. Chuxi doesn't have family either, but her minder came, claiming to be an uncle, and even Marcie's mom phoned in from Seattle. That's the sort of thing you do when your kid gets attacked by… well, vampires, but also if your kid gets attacked by gangbangers on PCP or by some whacko in leather with an evil barbeque fork. Or anyone, really, you know?

"Okay," says Buffy's mom gently. "Is Mr. Zabuto coming to get you?" Kendra shakes her head.

"I am to return to Jamaica when I am healed, ma'am," she says. Oh, Buffy can just see the moment when her mom decides Kendra's coming home with them. It's an actual, quantifiable, point-at-able moment.

—

Having a fellow Slayer sleeping on a futon at her house would be weird enough, but the fact that it turns into everyone having dinner (even Cordelia gets dragged along, though Giles doesn't because he's taking Ms. Calendar home) and Dr. Rosenberg thanking her mom for "everything you must put up with, Ms. Summers."

"I understand it is difficult to raise a daughter alone, particularly when they're in that rebellious stage," Dr. Rosenberg says with a polite smile. "Even my Willow is learning to push her limits. While that is a natural part of the growing process, it is often hard on the parents."

"Buffy's a good kid," Buffy's mom says. "They're all good kids. Marcie, have some peas." Xander and Jesse and poking one another with broccoli, and Chuxi is building a mashed potato tower with her tongue between her lips. Willow is sitting with her hands in her lap, but her mother's water glass is inching down the table as if of its own volition.

"Your daughter's academic record," Dr. Rosenberg starts, but Buffy's mom cuts her off.

"Buffy's academic record is no one's concern. She works very hard and I'm sure you remember how brave she was when those terrible men attacked us on Parent-Teacher Night."

"Certainly," says Dr. Rosenberg, "But the development of such a vigilante-like mentality is–" The glass shatters, and Dr. Rosenberg yelps and covers her face, only to overbalance and fall over backward. Her left shoe flies off, even though it's tied, and every single pea on her plate goes in a different direction. There's a moment of silence.

"Dr. Rosenberg, holy shit," says Jesse. The sentiment seems to be shared, as Giles would say. Kendra is staring at her plate like she doesn't know how to react. Actually, probably, she doesn't know how to react. She's only barely gotten over sitting next to Oz, who is far and away the calmest and least teenage-boy-like teenage boy Buffy's ever met. (Yeah, no, she's got to set an example here, as much as she may want to see Dr. Rosenberg flailing like an upside-down turtle.)

Buffy jumps to her feet and helps Dr. Rosenberg up, yammering about earthquakes and resonance and Chuxi, back me up here, you're better at physics. It's almost enough to set everyone talking about unusual seismic activity (that's the word!) and weird weather at length.

"At one gig, we had a freak lighting event," says Oz.

"Oh my gosh! Did something happen?" Cordelia gives him her best fascinated look. It pretty much bounces off.

"We played the gig. There was a freak lightning event." He chews a carrot pensively. "It was cool."

—

Willow pleads sleepover, and her mother relents, and then there's some frantic furniture-moving in an attempt to make room for nine teenagers to sleep in one house. Kendra lifts the couch over Willow's head to put it out of the way, and it's sort of on impulse that Buffy calls out:

"Don't do that, you'll pull your stitches!"

"Kendra, honey, you should be sitting down–" her mom starts, because of course her mom is there with an armload of blankets and things about to mother the trauma out of everyone, only there's the minor problem of Kendra lifting a couch and Willow showing off how she can hover pillows.

"Um," says Buffy. Her mother stares. Willow's pillows descend slowly. "Kendra, put the couch down, you'll pull your stitches."

Kendra does. Without her makeup on and without the context of a fight, she looks like she's just a kid too. A kid that can lift a 350-pound couch without breaking a sweat. Oops. For a very long moment, no one says anything.

"It's not…" Xander starts. "Mrs. Summers—"

"Mom, listen," Buffy starts, not sure where she's going at all. Her mom looks over the group slowly, carefully, then puts the bedsheets down on an armchair.

"Can all of you do that?" she asks weakly.

"No," says Kendra. There are a few silent head-shakes.

"Okay. But you all know they can do that?"

"Yep," says Cordelia. "I mean, it's helpful." Kendra tries to make herself look small, but doesn't really succeed.

"Helpful?" Buffy's mom echoes.

"We uh, we sort of, um…" Willow looks around helplessly. "I'm sorry…"

"Mom, we fight monsters," says Buffy. (We fight monsters, and I'm not a child of the Powers and bad times are coming and there needs to be a guardian in the gate, mom, don't you get it?)

"You can ask Giles!" Chuxi says suddenly. "And—And the principal, he was there, he'll tell you too!"

"My daughter, a librarian, and the school principal fights monsters," Buffy's mother says dully. "In Sunnydale, California."

"Do, um, do you want to sit down?" Willow asks. Buffy's mom sits.

"Kendra and I have superpowers because we're Slayers," Buffy says, because she may as well say all the things all at once. "Giles is a Watcher, he got sent to keep an eye on us and help us. Willow… can do magic, but that's not actually related it's just cool. We fight monsters and there's a lot of them, like the guys who attacked the school that you saw? Those guys."

"Vampires," Kendra supplies.

"There's a lot of them," Buffy says.

"And demons, too!" says Willow. And then they all start babbling at once, explaining about different monsters and things.

"Werewolves–"

"But only sometimes, you know?"

"The school's haunted–"

"Was haunted–"

"Do you really think that was all of them?"

"Buffy kicks major butt–"

"She saved my life, I almost got eaten–"

"Angel, do you know Angel?"

"He's gone off to save the world–"

"There was a curse–"

"Did already say demons? Willow, you said demons, right?"

"Superpowers–"

"The Watchers' Council, that's in England–

"Oh, and there was a giant bug–"

"Monster eggs–"

"Ms. Calendar got possessed, twice!"

"Giles's friends–"

Eventually they wind down, and Buffy realizes her mother has her face in her hands.

"Mom?" Buffy asks gently. "I'm—sorry, this is kinda a lot, but…"

"I hit a vampire with a fire axe," says Buffy's mom, sounding scandalized, like she's crying, and really entertained all at once.

"Yeah," Buffy tells her. "You did. It was badass." For a moment her mom is really quiet, but then she sits up straight, wipes her eyes, and looks around the room.

"Okay," she says. "Okay, fine. But now, you tell me everything."

"Mom–"

"No, I'm not letting my daughter and her friends go—go fight the forces of darkness alone. I am responsible for you. Tell me everything."

So they do.

—

They stay up half the night talking and explaining, and eventually Buffy's mom decides she's had enough and goes off to bed while everyone in the living tries to sleep off what feels like a near-miss of apocalyptic proportions.

This time, she dreams of Angel again. He's being fitted with armor by faceless, shadowy things, and in one hand he holds a heavy, incredibly sharp sword.

"If light can't get in, it can't get out either," says a familiar voice, cold and British. The armored woman, the spirit that had possessed Ms. Calendar, walks a slow circle around Angel.

"I can see in the dark," he says.

"You'll have to," the spirit answers.

—

Buffy's mom makes enough pancakes for ten people, then pulls her aside and says she needs to talk to Giles. That's… probably fair, actually, but she really doesn't want them to meet.

"He went home with Ms. Calendar. She's his girlfriend," she says. (She wants to say, no, mom, can we just keep pretending that the vampires and things happen to one Buffy and the pancakes and Thelma and Louise nights happen to another Buffy?)

"It's one in the afternoon, they'll be awake," says her mom. "I don't think Watchers really sleep in, do you?"

"I don't think Giles sleeps in," Buffy admits, because every time she gets to school in the morning Giles is already deep enough in his research to have been at it for hours.

"Then we're going to see him." And that's final, though first there's pancakes and a road trip through town to drop everyone off at home and Xander off at Jesse's and Kendra off at Cordelia's.

Buffy fidgets in the front seat as her mom drives. The silence is deafening.

"I really did mean to tell you," she says. "Only, there wasn't ever… It's not really something you talk about." She laughs helplessly. "Yeah, you know, school was great, had to miss a few classes because of murder eggs and the science fair got crashed by a talking ventriloquist's dummy and also a demon, but I think I'm really getting the hang of geometry!"

"Were those on the same day?" her mother asks.

"No, but like, within two months."

"Oh." They sit in silence. "Well, no wonder your grades suffered."

"I'm getting tutoring."

"That's good."

"I saved my biology teacher from a giant praying mantis last year."

"Dr. Gregory?"

"Yeah."

"Oh. Good. He's a nice man."

"Yeah." They really can't get to Giles's place soon enough. Maybe Giles can do the adult person thing and bridge the void, or maybe just do the Giles thing and be Exposition Man until everything is mostly clear. Yeah. That'd be nice. And if Ms. Calendar's still there, at least she's mostly normal.

—

Giles doesn't open his door when they knock, and Buffy wonders if he isn't maybe out somewhere, but her mom just knocks louder. There's a muffled crash on the other side, and a pained Giles-mumble that it probably takes Slayer-hearing to hear. Maybe it's not a good idea after all…

Giles opens the door a crack and stares blearily down at her, and she's hit with the overwhelming smell of stale alcohol.

He's wearing his clothes from the night before too, and suddenly she's really really sure Ms. Calendar isn't lurking somewhere in there with him. He holds up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun.

"Hi Giles!" Would perky help? She's gonna be perky quietly. Best of both worlds. "My mom kind of…"

"Mr. Giles, I'm here to talk about how my daughter is fighting vampires under your instruction." Or she could just say that, yeah. Giles opens the door a little wider, and looks like he wants to slam it in their faces.

"Of course. Buffy, Mrs. Summers, please come in," he says, impeccably annoying stuffy British Watcher-mode on.

It doesn't really make up for the state of his apartment, though, and the fact that all the lights are off and the curtains are closed doesn't help much either. The crash she'd heard was probably the knocked-over chair (Giles sets it upright and offers her mom a seat), but there are books strewn around and a bookshelf that looks like someone tried to knock it over but gave up, the fireplace is full of ashes, there's a pair of mugs full of what's either tea or some really weird potion on the table, and, oh yeah, the smell of alcohol is coming from both Giles and the multiple empty bottles. There's also some broken glass though she can't pinpoint where it came from. At least, some part of her mind says, there's no chalk on the walls.

(She's seen his apartment all of once, and it had been impeccably clean and well-lit then. She'd also seen him drunk exactly once, and that had been when he'd thought a demon had killed all his old friends and was trying to kill him. What the hell has happened here, and where is Ms. Calendar?)

Her mom eyes the liquor bottles, and Giles has the grace to start cleaning them up. (Something bad has happened here.)

"I er, wasn't expecting visitors so early," he says.

"It's two in the afternoon," says Buffy's mom, and they're not off to a good start.

"Ah," says Giles, and fishes a watch out of his couch cushions. "So it is. What can I do for you?"

"So I found out very late last night that you have my daughter missing classes and roaming the streets at night fighting—monsters." Her mom gets loud when she's upset, and while she was calm enough in the car she's clearly already upset. Giles winces and edges away. "As her mother, I think I have the right to know why!"

"Well, Buffy is— is the Slayer, you see," says Giles, and launches into his proper speech about one girl standing against the forces of darkness. He's interrupted partway through by a question Buffy never really bothered asking.

"Why?"

"Pardon me?" Giles would look ruffled, if he wasn't already looking like he slept in a dump.

"Why does only one girl do it? I mean, Buffy, your friend Kendra looks like she has the same… abilities as you. Couldn't she do it just as well?"

"Well, I– It's an odd situation, in that yes, Kendra is also a Slayer," Giles begins. Buffy's mom gives a triumphant ha! that makes him wince again.

"So there is more than one!" she says. "I knew it!"

"Traditionally—that is, historically—there has only been one at a time. The circumstances of Kendra's calling are—unusual." Giles tries to sweep a number of bottles into a plastic garbage bag, but the noise makes him tear up. He turns away quickly, fiddling with his glasses.

"Calling?"

"How she got her powers," Buffy cuts in. "I mean, I wasn't born with super strength and stuff." Her mother offers her a fond smile.

"Thank goodness for that!" Her smile fades as she turns back to Giles, who has by now given up on the bottles and poured himself a glass of water. "Who calls them? Is it you people? The Watchers?" Giles smiles, or maybe grimaces.

"No, no, we just… watch over the girls." He pauses. "As the name rather implies. We're– once assigned to a potential Slayer early in her life, a Watcher takes care of her, trains her, and offers support, especially once the girl is called."

"Watch in the look-out-for-in-case-of-monsters sense," Buffy adds. "Kendra's Watcher raised her, though, so I guess that's not always the case…"

"You've been … watching my daughter since she was little, then?" Buffy's mom asks. Giles blinks, shakes his head, then thinks better of the gesture.

"No, I inherited her," he says. "I– Merrick Jamison-Smythe was her first Watcher, in Los Angeles, and even he hadn't been keepings tabs on you before she was called. I suppose some do slip through the Council's cracks." God, it's been a while since she'd thought of Merrick She'd liked Merrick, once she stopped thinking he was insane. She'd cried over Merrick. It must show on her face, because her mom takes her by the hand and Giles's expression softens. "I apologize, that sounded rather crass."

"Rather?" Buffy's mom snaps, her voice rising. "Mr. Giles, you're treating my daughter as a statistic–"

"Please calm down, Mrs. Summers." Giles puts up his hands in surrender, but Buffy's mom very doesn't calm down. "I– I care very much about Buffy, surely you know that–"

"Oh yeah, I can see that!" Her voice is dripping with sarcasm.

" – And I do everything in my power to keep her and her friends safe." His power doesn't look all that extensive at the moment. "Please, Mrs. Summers. Buffy trusts me, and so can you."

"Please, mom, he's right. It's really okay." Buffy's mom takes a deep breath and tightens her grip on her hand. It's sort of comforting.

"You never told me how come there's two of them now," she says. "If you don't give them superpowers, who does?"

"They just kinda happen," says Buffy with a shrug. You are not a child of the Powers, Lady Slayer. She's not going to tell her mother that she died, and that's why there was a superpowered Jamaican girl crashing on her living room floor. Luckily, Giles does that for her, because he's still in Watcher-lecture mode.

"A Slayer inherits her powers upon the death of her predecessor," he says. (She doesn't think of coming home from an apocalypse in a the soaked, wrecked remnants of a white dress, crashing from an adrenaline rush while her mother strokes her hair and says useless things.) Her mom's grip on her hand goes super tight suddenly. Buffy glances sideways at her, and sort of wishes she hadn't. Her mom's expression goes from confused to comprehending to a sort of furious she hadn't seen since her parents were divorcing.

"Her death?" she asks. "You let my daughter die so that this other girl could get her powers?"

"I did everything I could to stop her," Giles snaps.

"You're an adult," her mom yells. "Everything you could isn't enough— I saw her when she came home—I thought she'd

been in a fight at the dance—A dance! You had her killed!"

"I got better," Buffy says lamely, but it's not enough. "And we fixed my dress, mom, it's okay."

"You are vastly oversimplifying–" says Giles. Her mom pulls her hand free and gets up to get in his face. Giles backs away to keep some distance between them, and she ends up backing him around the room.

"Tell me what, exactly, I'm getting wrong when I say you sent a sixteen-year-old girl into a deathtrap when she was supposed to go to a school dance! Tell me what part of that I don't understand!" Backed into a corner, Giles puts his glasses back on, and stands up very straight.

"It is quite complicated actually, and you certainly won't understand any of it if you don't stop being—being hysterical!" His voice is cold, and Buffy's actually never seen that look on her mom's face before. She's seen her mom angry, she's seen her mom crying, but this is new.

"Oh, I'm not being hysterical," she says, and deals Giles a right hook to the face. He goes down, and Buffy grabs her mom and drags her back because the ground under Giles's hands is glowing red.

"Mom, come on—Giles, she didn't—"

"I did," her mother says coldly. "You stay away from my daughter, Mr. Giles, and from the rest of those kids too. Buffy, we're leaving."

The floor is hot beneath their feet, and she sees the bolt on the door click to locked (she doesn't want to break Giles's door but she doesn't want to stay there and she doesn't want to turn around because she's not sure what she'll see), but her mom doesn't stop and bashes the door from its hinges with a well-aimed and very adrenaline-fueled kick. And then she hauls Buffy back into the minivan, puts in gear, and peals out of there.

"Mom–"

"If you have to fight monsters, you'll fight monsters," her mom says, still shaking with fury. "Fine, you're the Slayer. But you know what? I'm your mother. There's some things I'm gonna fight for you."

Her mom is kinda awesome.


	8. 1998, Summer (1)

Slayers have to eat too, probably more than normal people, so by the time Buffy and her mom stick Kendra on the plane to Jamaica a few days later there's maybe a half stick of butter and two grapes in the house. It's sort of a mess. At least her mom is taking the whole supernatural superpowers super destiny thing well enough. But her mom also has grown up things to do, and Buffy's destiny doesn't pack her lunch. So while her mom is at the gallery, Buffy goes grocery shopping.

With superpowers.

What Giles would call 'mundane applications of supernatural power' if Giles wasn't moping all alone somewhere because he'd been up and broken up with. She's not sure whether she wants to punch him or punch Ms. Calendar or lock them in a room together or personally find a therapist or something. Well, her mom's already punched him (which she's still not entirely over?), so maybe she should just go for the therapist…

Anyway, she's lugging a very large amount of food and bottles of water and orange juice and stuff, when she takes a sharp turn down an aisle and almost physically runs into Ms. Calendar. She's got those really big sunglasses on and a loose jacket and almost drops a gallon of milk at the sight of Buffy.

"Oh, please no," she says at the same time Buffy manages an aggressively cheerful–

"Hi, Ms. Calendar!" Ms. Calendar stares at her for a long moment, but Buffy has her violently cheerleader face on. "Didn't know you, uh, grocery shop!"

"I… I was… I don't have milk," says Ms. Calendar a bit lamely.

"Oh," says Buffy. "Well, uh. Milk's good." She has no idea what she's supposed to do or say. Ms. Calendar grimaces and mumbles something about brownies.

"Brownies are good for sadness," Buffy says. "Because you're really clearly with the sadness."

"I don't think I'm going to eat a brownie ever again in my life," says Ms. Calendar. "But thanks."

"Giles is– Giles is…" She's not sure what Giles is doing right now. "He's sad too."

(Giles is currently recovering up from a night out with an old friend, which through not much fault of his own had ended with him tied to his bed, fully clothed, with a note reading 'Good luck and don't be an idiot' pinned to his chest, but no one needs to know that.)

"I'm… It's really alright," says Ms. Calendar dully. "I think it's…Thanks, alright?" And then she practically flees. Buffy thinks it's a bit obvious that it's not fine, but that's not a conversation she can be an adult for so she lets Ms. Calendar run.

(Ms. Calendar promptly runs into Cordelia, who has twelve different kinds of cupcakes on hand and asks her why, exactly, she and Giles broke up. Ms. Calendar babbles something about adult issues and tries to escape her, only to smack into Willow on her way out. Willow takes one look at her and bursts into tears.

"Oh, god," says Ms. Calendar. "This is the eighth circle of Hell.")

The problem is, other than the jarring thought that teachers have to grocery shop and also have relationships, that after that Buffy starts to hear things about Ms. Calendar. Bad things. She's pretty sure they're lies, they've gotta be lies, because Ms. Calender looked so messed up and sad but… maybe not. Maybe she's not sad. Maybe she's secretly not sad.

But she's probably most likely not making out with Principal Wood immediately after breaking Giles's heart, right?

"Well, I heard it from Harmony," says Chuxi, sipping daintily at her milkshake. "I don't think she knows how to lie."

"Well, yeah," says Buffy, "But maybe she doesn't know for sure, right? I mean. It's Harmony." Harmony is an idiot, an idiot who likes to gossip, but the trouble with idiots is that they're predictable.

"Well, I guess," says Chuxi, twirling a lock of her hair. "But still… Xander said she'd been looking at him and stuff. Well, I think all the lady teachers look at him, he's handsome, but still. And Giles is old."

"He's not that old!" Buffy objects. "He's just… Giles." She sighs and stabs her ice cream with a spoon. She's not angry at Giles anymore, but she's gotta be angry at something.

"He has grey hair," Chuxi points out. "He's old."

"He's pretty old," Marcie pipes up. "And Ms. Calendar's really pretty. She could do better."

That's about when Willow, Xander, and Jesse make their appearance, with Willow in the lead.

"Who's doing better?" Willow asks. She's got eyeliner on with glitter on the edges, and Jesse keeps shooting her weird looks. "Is it Giles? Are he and Ms. Calendar back together? Is-is it monsters? Are we doing better on the vampires? It is summer, there's less nighttime, so maybe we're going better on the vampires?"

"Maybe a couple more questions at once, Will," says Xander, rolling his eyes. Willow huffs.

"Who's doing better?" she repeats.

"Buffy thinks Ms. Calendar is not making out with the principal," says Chuxi helpfully. "What about you guys?" Willow goes wide-eyed.

"No with the kissing!" she yelps. "That's not what she's supposed to do!"

"Yeah," says Xander. "But don't you think Giles is kinda old for her?"

"Exactly!" says Chuxi. "Thank you!"

"Giles isn't old," says Buffy firmly. "Now eat your stupid ice cream."

—

Okay, so Ms. Calendar probably isn't embarking on a torrid romances with Principal Wood, some poorly-described punk rocker who may be Spike, multiple different other British guys, and Miss Alvarez who teaches music at the junior high school. Because Buffy's heard each of those at least once, and she's starting to think Harmony just repeats everything she hears.

"Miss Alvarez?" Xander asks. "That'd be–" Willow jabs him in the ribs, hard. "–That'd be really really unlikely, I mean. Even though they're both really hot teacher ladies."

"It's all a big misunderstanding," says Willow, still with the sparkles. "That's all it is." Xander looks dubious, and Buffy sort of wishes for someone else to be there. She loves her friends, and she'd trust them to have her back in a vampire attack, but she so doesn't trust Xander and Willow when it comes to understanding adults. Willow's like a kid, and Xander's a teenage boy. It just doesn't work.

"Yeah," she says. "Big misunderstanding. You're right, Will. It's just a big mess, but it's not an apocalypse and you know what?"

"What?"

"It's time for a rousing speech?" Xander guesses. She glares at him. Her speech isn't all that rousing, she knows. No need to point it out.

"It's up to us to get them back together. They haven't even talked. I'm pretty sure Ms. Calendar only left the house to get groceries. I don't think Giles has actually gotten groceries." She hopes he has. And that he's cleaned his apartment? "Anyway, my point is—we've got to treat this like we treat every other problem."

"Research!" says Willow happily. "Then stabbing! Only not stabbing in this case, because we're stabbing the problem but not the people. That would be bad."

"Right," says Buffy. "No one gets stabbed, but we need to find out what's going on an set a plan of attack." That sounded almost Giles-y of her. She's sort of proud.

—  
But she's not Giles-y enough to do this on her own. Willow goes off to research almost immediately, and Buffy's stuck trying to hash out a more active plan with Xander. She's really not sure how real-Giles does it, because she wants to bash Xander's head against a table at about the fifth 'clever' comment he makes. Not that he's not being funny, she'd normally laugh at his jokes, but…

"Listen, how about we split up and go on… on Ms. Calendar patrol? Like if you see her, sort of… I don't know, stall her."

"Stall her?" Xander asks nervously. "Um, how?"

"She's a teacher!" Buffy snaps. "Just… student at her. Xander at her. Keep her in one place with your Xander-powers. Talk."

"Talk?" Xander sort of squeaks.

"Talk," she confirms. "I'm gonna find Giles."

"I thought you're being Giles?"

"Am I a good Giles?"

"No?"

"Okay. So I'm gonna go find actual-Giles."

—

Actual-Giles is at home, again, but this time his apartment is clean and he's dressed all Giles-y. He looks a bit disappointed when he opens the door to see her, but still offers her a weak grin.

"Ah–Hello Buffy. I've been, er, cleaning. Would you like a cup of tea?" he asks.

"Okay," she says "Are you okay? I mean, last time– I mean– I'm sorry my mom sort of punched you?"

"I certainly had it coming," says Giles sort of bitterly. "Are the two of you alright?"

"We're fine, mom's… angry.. about things, but I think she's getting better, and um…" Well, no time like the present. "Giles, what happened?" Giles turns away and starts polishing his glasses vehemently.

"I–That is," he says, then gives up and just puts the glasses down on the counter next to a cup of cold coffee and a bucket of cleaning supplies. "It really isn't… It shouldn't be your concern. Everything's…fine." Well, that's clearly bullshit.

"I mean you're not drunk anymore now but you were, and you broke up with Ms. Calendar and you're—you weren't being all Watcher-y and Giles, what happened?" He still won't look at her, and she remembers the heat of red magic on the floor. There's still a mark from it, she realizes as she turns—a pair of black burn marks along wood, all the way to the door. "You almost…"

"Yes," Giles says flatly. "I almost hurt the two of you."

"I was going for you almost drank yourself to death," she says, even though sort of yeah. "You–You're my Watcher." Like that means something. It doesn't really mean anything, not properly, because she's not a proper Slayer and proper Watchers probably didn't go on benders or, you know, have sordid pasts full of demons and weird tattoos.

"I–er, well, yes, I suppose I am–did." He grimaces. "Some Watcher. You have my sincerest apologies for… all, er, all of that."

"Giles, it's fine." It's not fine, but he's clearly beating himself up and she wants him on literally any other topic. Including maybe the topic of breakups, but maybe not. "I'm fine, mom's fine, you're the one who's not fine so please, just… Can I help?" Glasses back on. Watcher-man is back.

"Buffy, don't be absurd," he says. "I–It isn't your job to come in here and–and try to comfort me when I am shirking my duty." He puts his hands on her shoulders gently, then thinks better of it and puts them in his pockets instead. The little bit is enough through, because Giles's hands are uncomfortably clammy rather than burning with red magic. So, she hugs him, tightly, and he doesn't tense as much as he used to.

"So," she says after quite a while of Giles hug, "What happened?" Giles sighs and rubbed the back of his neck.

"I asked Jenny to marry me," He pauses, and Buffy feels her own breath catch in her throat. "and she said no,"

"Oh," says Buffy. And suddenly she thinks Ms. Calendar isn't as sad about things as she seems to be. "Giles, I'm so sorry."

—

"Willow!"

"Buffy!" Willow's glitter eyeliner has quite possibly grown since Buffy last saw her, and she's sort of bouncing on her toes. "Buffy, Buffy, I found out!"

"Yay?" Buffy asks. Her mind is still on Giles alone in his apartment with … well, not with alcohol now but with the sadness. Willow bounces harder.

"Why Giles and Ms. Calendar broke up!" Willow says.

"He asked her to marry him," Buffy answers. Willow nods, and her sparkles definitely increase.

"She–she was scared, well, they were both scared, so she said no and now they're fighting sort of because– because fear makes people do the strangest things, and we're gonna do the the normal people things of getting them back together because there's not any magic for that!"

"Oh. Well, then." Buffy sort of stares at her, because wow that was a lot of words all at once that started in feelings and ended somewhere pouty. "I… Do you think that's a good idea? I mean… she's… she told him…"

"We have to fix it!" says Willow, sparkles extending up her cheekbones and skirting dangerously close to her ears. "They're not going to fix it themselves so we need to fix it because otherwise it'll be super bad forever! Do you want Giles and Ms. Calendar to be sad forever?"

"Hey, that's not what I meant," Buffy grumbles. "I just mean, some people are better off…not together. Sometimes people aren't meant to be together, even if they think they are." She's sounding like her mother, and by like her mother she means she's exactly quoting her mother while probably making the exact same facial expression her mom makes every time someone says the word 'divorce' near her.

"Buffy, that's not– that's not fair!" Willow's sparkles are definitely in her ears now, and she's sort of getting teary again. "It's not fair, it's not fair! I promised—they have to be happy because it's not fair if they're not happy, Buffy—they're nice people and nice people should be happy!"

Well, that's not a point she can argue. Actually, she's not sure she can argue many points with Willow at all, with an extra side of not really, because of the ear-sparkles.

"Okay, fine," Buffy says. "Do you have a plan, or are you expecting me to be plan lady?"

"Oh, uh, I was sort of thinking… maybe… make them go somewhere where they're happy?" Oh. Okay. Buffy is SO gonna have to be plan lady.

—

In the end they both end up being plan lady, and then Buffy's mom joins in the planning and the grand plan ends up being to drag everyone to the beach. Beaches are happy places, and they're also swimsuit places (though thinking of her teachers in swimsuits gives her an incredible case of the wigs), so it's not that hard to make a bunch of teenagers want to go there. Giles is the problem.

"But what if there's monsters at the beach?" Buffy asks him, doing her best look of wide-eyed innocence. Giles polishes his glasses uncomfortably.

"Buffy, the likelihood of running into any sort of monster on a beach in the middle of the day in June is terribly low. And furthermore I have a great deal of cataloguing to do—"

"But Giles! Beach!" she whines. "Beach and sun and sand and — and water and things! It's summer!"

"I'm not saying you can't go—" Giles mutters helplessly.

"And I'm saying come with!" Buffy pleads. "It's not like you'll be the only grownup! Mom's coming along, and… and what if there's actual demons? I need my Watcher."

"Yes," says Giles, lowering his head to hide a smile. "Just in case there's actually demons."

She almost feels bad for playing him like this. Almost. Phase one is a go.

(Meanwhile, over in phase two, Willow is bouncing on her toes on Ms. Calendar's doorstep going over a list of things to say. I read that seashells are good for spells Ms. Calendar, water is the element of the feminine and I really think I should be getting in touch with my feminine Ms. Calendar, won't you come out and babysit all of us while wearing a pretty swimsuit Ms. Calendar, Mr. Rayne said you were scared but you shouldn't be because Giles really really likes you Ms. Calendar. Well, one of those would work. Probably. Oh she misses Mr. Rayne, but his motel room is abruptly empty with no forwarding address.)

—

They do, somehow, all make it to the beach—sans Cordelia, who's on vacation with her parents—and Giles lurks uncomfortably under a beach umbrella in a collared shirt and slacks with a textbook on aquatic monsters.

"Ms. Calendar is coming, right?" Buffy hisses to Willow, who is at least making with less of the sparkles today. Her swimsuit has ridiculous little yellow flowers on it.

"Uh-huh," says Willow. "She promised! She said she'd come and show me how to—communicate with, um, with the web of magic."

"Cool, okay," says Buffy. "Um, with the magic webs." Willow nods and grins so big her sparkles grow petals. "On the beach. And stuff."

Meanwhile, Xander and Chuxi are giggling at each other over ice cream while Jesse piggybacks Marcie through the water shrieking and yelling. Buffy's mom is getting chatty with the lifeguard, who's only a little younger than her. Oz turns up late in his van, but he turns up late with lunch and his guitar and Willow launches herself into his arms with a happy squeal. Happy days all around, Buffy thinks, and joins Giles in the umbrella lurking.

"What happened to sunlight and water?" Giles asks dryly.

"I miss Angel," she says back, and feels bad because she's stopped missing Angel a lot of the time. He's just a ghostly presence in the back of her head, just a memory that crops up at inopportune moments like when boys try to ask her out. And now. Now she really does miss Angel. Giles pats her on the shoulder wearily.

"Er, yes," he says. "If there is… Ji'irash demons have been sighted along the coast of California on fairly regular timetables. If we do go up against them, you should make sure to go—er, strike directly at the joints in their shells, see."

"Yeah, I'll make with the elbow-snapping, promise," Buffy replies, instead of saying thank you. "I'll kick their butts."

—

Giles is three varieties of aquatic demon into his Watcher lecture when Willow makes an incredibly high pitched noise, launches herself off of Oz's lap (seriously, is there a gross couple competition on?) and runs full tilt at the parking lot, because a familiar VW Bug's pulled up.

"What–" Buffy starts, but the word's barely out of her mouth before she knows exactly what, because Willow is aggressively snuggling a sunglasses'd Ms. Calendar. A sunglasses'd Ms. Calendar wearing a slinky black swimsuit and a flowery sarong. Buffy hears Giles swear under his breath, and he stammers through another sentence of demon lecture before he gives up entirely and starts packing his things. Buffy grabs his arm without looking.

"Buffy, please," says Giles.

"Nope," Buffy says back, because she's so done with this. He's sitting though this if she has to do like three times the training and patrolling as punishment. Giles glares at her.

"Alright, alright," Ms. Calendar says, and she's almost laughing. "I didn't think you'd be this glad to see me."

"I'm super super glad!" Willow chirps. "Super super! It makes everything better! Now you're here, and everything's gonna be great, promise. So um, so um, with the webs of magic and things! Show me!" She giggles and latches onto Ms. Calendar's arm, still bouncing up and down. "Also we have ice cream, Oz brought ice cream sandwiches, so you should have one before they get all melty!"

"Yes, you do seem to be having a party," says Ms. Calendar dryly, trying in vain to dislodge her. "Did you invite the whole school?"

"I didn't invite," Willow promises. "People just came—and I mean–"

"Willow-"

"–Buffy invited, and I guess people invited people and now people are here–"

"Willow, please."

"–but it's not really a party, no siree, it's just a completely ordinary time at the beach for a magic lesson with no cunning plots afoot at all, just happy beach magic lessons time!"

"Willow!" Ms. Calendar snaps, yanking her arm free finally.

"Yes?" She's bouncing up and down and (holy crap) she's got glitter in her hair(!) now.

"What in the world are you planning?" Ms. Calendar has her hands on her hips and her sunglasses off. Her makeup is really dark and pointy. Willow's hair glitter fades.

"Not planning! None of the planning! Really. I'm not an evil plotty planner!"

"No one said evil," says Ms. Calendar, "but for goodness sake, what's going on?" That's the moment Giles stands up and says:

"Jenny, I'm sorry," he says, and Ms. Calendar's expression goes from mildly amused to shocked to angry in seconds.

"Rupert," she says, all cold, and suddenly this doesn't seem like it was a good idea because Ms. Calendar is making the same face Buffy's mom makes when she talks about the divorce. "I see."

"For what it's worth–" Giles begins, but Ms. Calendar waves her hand and he shuts up.

"I know what this is," she says. "Which one of you had this bright idea, huh? Which one of you kids thought up this clever little plot?"

There a long moment of silence. Finally, Oz raises his hand awkwardly.

"There was a plan?" he asks. Giles manages a weak little laugh and makes a 'well I mean' gesture.

"There was like, half a plan," Buffy admits. "Sorry."

"It was a good plan," says Willow. "You can't– you can't just keep doing this, because it's not¬–it's not okay, and me and Buffy had a plan and I had a better plan but Mr. Rayne said forgetting spells are too complicated for someone at my level so this is the plan we're going with and please don't be mad because we want you to be happy and that's why we're doing this but also because beach and sunshine and web of magic, you know?"

"No, I don't," says Ms. Calendar.

"I'm– er, what?" says Giles at about the same time.

"Buffy, happy things!" Willow whimpers, and then everyone starts talking at once.

"Forgetting spells?"

"There was a plan?"

"Who made the plan?"

"Wait who said what?"

"That's mind control, I think?"

"Wait, Ethan Rayne¬–"

"Leave Mr. Rayne out of this–"

"Creepy Ethan?"

"Anyone else still on the mind control?"

"It's okay, I'm still on mind control."

"I'm still on the cunning plan, honestly."

"You know what? I'm not dealing with this," says Ms. Calendar. "I don't need to deal with this."

"Jenny, please," says Giles a bit helplessly. "I can assure you–"

"I don't need your assurances," says Ms. Calendar, and she turns back around and marches to her car. Willow makes a despair sound and latches onto her again. "Willow, get– no, actually we need to have a conversation. Get in the car."

"But Ms. Calendar–"

"Right now Willow."

"Is everything alright over here?" And now cue mom, as Willow sort of wilts at Ms. Calendar's side and Giles is fidgeting unbearably and Buffy just about wants to scream and Oz is holding two half-melted ice cream sandwiches.

"We're uh," says Buffy, before she realizes she doesn't really have a word for apocalypse but only on a personal level.

"Mrs. Summers, this, er, this wasn't…" Giles trails off.

"We're fine," says Ms. Calendar. "I'm taking Willow back home now. Nice to see all of you, now goodbye." And then they're gone.

"Holy shit," says Xander. "That didn't go well." Giles stands there for a moment, then shakes his head and cleans his glasses.

"Yes, well, I er, I think I am needed elsewhere," he says. "I have, er, books. Indoors."

"Oh for god's sake, Mr. Giles, you can organize your books another day!" Buffy's mom snaps. "We didn't come to the beach to mope!"

"Er, quite so, only–" Giles stops talking when Oz shoves the less melted ice cream sandwich in his face.

"Cures some ills," Oz says. Giles stares at him for a moment, then accepts the ice cream and sits back down, and then Xander and Jesse start goofing around and she ends up throwing them both headfirst into the water while the girls laugh.

Honestly, Oz is the hero of the whole day.

 _Author's note: Since next week contains American Thanksgiving and we are going to be taking a break from our regular posting schedule. We are gonna take the week to start writing season three and other various things. In lieu of new main story chapters we have lots of little side stories to keep you occupied during the week! So thanks all and see you later! -Stormy_


	9. 1998, Summer (2)

Well, Giles is angry at her and entirely too quiet, Ms. Calendar's missing in action again, Willow is really obviously in trouble, and her mom has the lifeguard's phone number while Buffy has a cursed vampire semi-boyfriend in who-knows-where who wouldn't be able to go to the beach with her even if he was back in Sunnydale. Buffy's pretty sure she's oh-for-four right now, and she's even more sure she prefers problems she can stake. Or kick. Kicking is good too.

It kind of sucks that there's been a grand total of like three vampires around in the past week. Way too quiet for her tastes. It's like the entire monster population has decided to go on vacation or something. And it's around two in the morning, so she pictures a slime demon wearing that bikini Cordelia felt the need to literally bring to her house and show her and ends up giggling like an idiot in the middle of a cemetery.

Well, she giggles like an idiot until she hears the click-clack of a gun safety coming off, because thanks Slayer hearing! God, she's tired.

"Hey, who's there?" she calls, and gets an answer in the form of three dudes in special-ops gear appearing awkwardly from behind a mausoleum. They're wearing goggles, but she's pretty sure she makes eye contact with their leader anyway. If he has eyes. You can never be too sure about that sort of thing. Special ops leader looks over at special ops two, and special ops two makes the universal hand gesture for 'dude, I don't even know'. Special ops three looks up, which makes her think he's rolling his hypothetical eyes.

"What are you doing here?" he asks. His voice is sort of distorted by mechanical stuff.

"Just hanging out!" Buffy chirps, because what else is she supposed to say? "You know, cemeteries in the dark—that's where all the fun is!" She's trying to look as innocent and teenage-girl like as possible. Special ops two gestures 'dude, I don't even know' again, and she's pretty sure the noise special ops leader makes is a laugh.

"Seriously?" says special ops three, tinny and exasperated. "Don't you think it's a bit dangerous?"

"Not really!" Buffy lies. "I like the ambience!" Ambience. Right. That's like, Willow-levels of smooth right there. Only with a bit less babbling, though special ops three looks like he's trying to fend off a migraine through his mask-and-goggles and special ops leader is definitely chuckling, and she's about thirty awkward seconds away from going full-on word vomit at them.

"Fuck it," says special ops two. "Ambience. Calling it a night."

"Our orders–" special ops three says, but two is already putting his gun away and fiddling with something on his vest. "Hey, you can't do that!"

"Doing it right now," two says. "It's late, I'm hungry, and the scariest thing we've found lurking is a teenage girl who likes the ambience. I'm done for the night." Leader actually snorts.

"Don't put that in the report," he says.

"Fuck you," says three. "It's all going in the report."

"D'ya need a picture?" Buffy asks, and they all turn to her. "I've a little– I've got a camera!" It's a dinky little disposable one, left over from the grand plan that wasn't. Another of Willow's brilliant ideas. "For your report, I mean?"

"I think we're good," says two, shaking his head. "Thanks, though."

"No problem!" says Buffy. "I'll just, uh… go find another graveyard to lurk in!" She bolts, but not quickly enough or far enough to miss the next exchange.

"If she's an Ess-Tee," says three warningly, but leader cuts him off.

"Lame excuse for one if she is. Come on." And then they're out of even Slayer-earshot. Ess-Tee? Estie? ST? What? And she'd been lurking in Sunnydale's graveyards for years now without seeing anything even remotely approaching special ops guys. And they hadn't triggered any Slayer-senses, so they had to be human special ops guys.

Or robots. Could be robots.

—

"There's something up," she tells Giles the next time she sees him.

"Please don't have any more ideas," says Giles wearily. She pouts at him and considers pointing out that the beach was like 60% Willow's idea. Okay, like 50% Willow's idea. The point was, Willow was just as to blame as she was.

"There's soldiers," she says. "Human soldiers. In Sunnydale. Patrolling the graveyards and things. He called me an Ess-Tee!"

"A what?" Giles looks baffled.

"I don't know what it means," Buffy adds hastily. "But he called me one and I don't like it."

"I, er, well, I suppose it doesn't sound pleasant?" Giles tries. Good enough. She nods.

"Exactly," she tells him. "And I think they're scaring off the demons."

"A real tragedy," says Giles, and he almost smiles.

—

She almost feels bad for being mad at Willow, because the next time she sees the girl Willow looks an absolute mess. Her magical sparkle makeup is gone, her hair is back to nerd-Willow, and the first words out of her mouth are:

"Buffy, I'm a terrible person!"

"Aw, Will, what happened?" Well, she can guess what happened. Ms. Calendar, Willow's all-time favorite teacher, must have yelled at her. Poor Willow, though it was like 50% her fault. (Does she deserve 50% of being yelled at?)

"Ms. Calendar, she—she–" Willow sniffles and rubs at her cheeks. "Oh Buffy, we did something terrible— we made Ms. Calendar cry!"

"What?" says Buffy, because she genuinely can't picture Ms. Calendar in tears. Ms. Calendar's all pointy and cold and full of lies—she's always been lying, and now Giles is the sort of heartbroken that goes quiet. She hates it. She almost hates Ms. Calendar. It's only almost because she reserves that kind of hating for Slayer-enemies, and Ms. Calendar is human…unfortunately.

"I made her cry and she said it hurt, we were hurting her, and that's not what we were doing, we were helping— it was supposed to help!" Willow rocks on her toes. "It wasn't a bad thing, Buffy, tell me it wasn't a bad thing—I like Ms. Calendar, I don't want her to cry! I don't want anyone I like to cry! It's not–"

"Fair?" Buffy finishes, maybe a little more snappily than she intended, and Willow goes big-eyed and shuts up. "Of course it's fair—Giles did something stupid, Ms. Calendar did something stupid, and we did something stupid, and now everything is all wrong and there's nothing we can do about it! Because that's how life it, I guess, because the only problems I can solve are the ones I can stake and the rest of the world is just on its own!"

Only as soon as the words are out of her mouth she's regretting them, because Willow sort of folds up like she used to back at the beginning of sophomore year and bites her lip and says:

"Oh. Okay."

"No– I– Willow, come on." But the damage is done, because, Willow ducks her head and runs away, flitting through a crowd until she's out of sight. Headed home, probably. Or to find Xander and Jesse. (Or to ruin someone else's day.) Buffy could go after her, but she doesn't. Instead she drags herself home and plans to spend a day watching dumb movies and being annoyed.

She doesn't do that, though, because there's a letter waiting for her at home, in a thick envelope postmarked from some country she doesn't recognize but addressed in Angel's familiar, old-fashioned handwriting. And just like that, the world is sunny-bright.

 _Dear Buffy_ , the letter runs.

 _I'm safe._

 _I've just made it to the rainforest in Borneo. It's strange to think there are parts of the world I've never been in but this is one of them. I took a couple of cargo ships until I was able to give them the slip in Malaysia. Thankfully there isn't a huge demon population here that I was able to find a farmer able to take me to the mountains. The tree cover is so thick on cloudy days I can move around some. I should be on the move again in a couple of days. In the meantime you should tell Giles to look into some of the temples in the mountains. I've put in some sketches._

Here it looks a few sentences have been scratched out. Buffy squints, holds the paper in front of a light, flips it over but she can't read it.

 _Have you started your senior year yet? Which classes are you taking? I hope Giles hasn't been training you too hard. Are you still hanging out with Willow?_

More scratched out writing.

 _I miss you._

 _I miss your smile. I miss your hair. I miss your passion, your sense of humor and knowing that you're nearby. I wish you were here with me. But this is a better arrangement. It's not like the slayer could leave town._

More scribbled over words.

 _I don't have a lot of time a lot of paper left but I just wanted to write. Hope this letter gets to you before I do._

 _Love,_

 _Angel_

 _Also I hope you like the necklace. I got it from a local Indonesian bazaar. I thought it would match your eyes._

She reads the letter three times over before she even bothers turning to the necklace, and then she reads it over again while playing with the beads — they're deep green, brighter and more intense in color than her eyes when she holds them up to her face to check, and as far as she can tell completely normal. Aside from being a gift from her long-distance vampire boyfriend. She hugs both the necklace and the letter and buries her face in a pillow (and definitely, totally doesn't make happy squealing noises).

(She's going to wear this necklace forever.)

—

Seriously, though, what is she supposed to write back?

 _Dear Angel, we haven't had any apocalypses lately, so that's cool. Giles and Ms. Calendar broke up, though, so everyone's being hysterical and I can't get a straight sentence out of Willow, also some weird soldier guy called me an estee. Sorry about the whole curse thing, miss you too, XOXO Buffy_

Yeah, that's not gonna cut it. Six failed attempts at letter writing (she's starting to understand all the scribbles now), an awkward dinner with her mom (yes, Angel's a vampire, can we please stop having this discussion now?), and an unanswered phone call to Willow later, she decides she's just going to sleep on it. Maybe her Slayer dreams will make themselves useful, for once.

Instead, she dreams of a dark-haired girl running down a street, fleeing a wave of red. Gasping for breath, the girl turns a sharp corner and suddenly Buffy is in her own body rather than observing from above, and the girl grabs her by the wrist.

"What are you doing here, blondie? Run!" the girl urges, and the two of them flee side-by side.

"What is it?" Buffy asks her, but the dark-haired girl shakes her head.

"Dunno," she says, looking near panic. "Wasn't it always there?" As they run, the streets around them change, and she's running toward Sunnydale High. Giles is standing there in a t-shirt, taking notes as they approach him.

"Ahead of the pack," he says. "But you're too slow."

"It's because you aren't training," says Kendra, who is suddenly there. There's butterflies sitting on her head, and they take off when she moves. "Come on, now. Let's get moving!" And she grabs the dark-haired girl by the other hand and starts to pull them along.

"But what's chasing us?" Buffy asks. "Giles–" But Giles is gone, so's the school, and suddenly they're rushing past unfamiliar houses and plants that are way too tropical for southern California. Kendra leads them into one house in particular, standing away from the others, but it starts crumbling as soon as she touches it.

And then they're standing in a green, green field, the three of them all in a row. There's a crack in the ground right in front of them, and Buffy feels the overwhelming urge to look into it.

"You are not children of the Powers," says a familiar voice, cold and British. The armored woman is standing opposite them. Butterflies alight on her shoulders, and she tries to brush them off but they keep coming back.

"Then what are we?" Buffy asks. She can feel the dark-haired girl's grip on her wrist tighten. "I can't keep doing this without knowing what we are."

"You were wrought in shadows to fight for light," says the armored woman. "It is a necessary purpose, but shadows loom long."

"It's coming, look!" the dark-haired girl yells suddenly, and something red starts to bubble up through the crack in the ground. Buffy yanks her back, away, and Kendra hesitates with a stake in her hand as if she wants to try to stab a liquid.

"Oh dear," says the armored woman. "You should wake up now."

And Buffy wakes in a cold sweat.

—

Hell with it. She writes Angel a long, rambling letter about high school and Slayer dreams and her friends being idiots and how much she misses him and how she loves the necklace and she's totally going to give Giles the sketches. Then she stuffs the thing into an envelope with a solid dozen silly polaroids of herself and her friends and her mom and mails the whole thing to Angel's return address in Borneo.

Borneo. Where even is that? She'd ask Willow, only Willow isn't taking her calls, and she'd ask Giles, only she doesn't really want to. Her mom's still sort of stuck on the vampire part of long-distance vampire boyfriend in Borneo, so that's right out. Well, whatever. She evades her mom (yes, mom, Angel is still a vampire, yes he is so nice), grabs her non-slaying bag, and insists she needs more stamps as she flees out the door.

Outside, the sun is brilliantly bright, and the grass is as green as it was in her dream. That dream… Cryptic prophecy nonsense she's getting used to, but this one was extra weird. She'd recognized Kendra, of course, but what about the other girl? Another Slayer? But Kendra hasn't died, Kendra is fine, Kendra is safely in Jamaica with her sketchy Watcher who doesn't let her talk to boys. Right?

So she goes to find Giles again and demands he give her Kendra's Watcher's phone number, because he clearly has that, and then she sits on his unexpectedly comfy couch and calls the guy. He sounds like a jerk, even on the phone, but eventually permits Kendra to talk to her. They're both Slayers after all. Giles gives her a supportive smile from across the room.

"Kendra! Hey! Your Watcher's a jackass!" Buffy says cheerfully, and Giles goes from supportive smile to trying not to laugh.

"Yes, of course we can compare training systems," Kendra answers, sounding a bit amused. "Is there something specific?"

"He didn't want me to talk to you, big jerk. Anyway, training question first, Slayering question second, okay?" She keeps up a good talk about different types of swords, learns that Kendra wants to learn to fence but her Watcher thinks it's, and she quotes, foppish, (Buffy isn't sure what that word means but guesses it isn't good) and generally ties up the phone for a solid five minutes.

"Alright, he has gone," Kendra says suddenly. "What is it you wanted to ask me?"

"Weird Slayer dream. Running down the streets with something chasing us. You were in it—and another girl." On the other end of the line, Kendra goes quiet. "Did you dream something like that too?"

"We are not children of the Powers," she recites. "We are wrought in shadow to fight for the light. It is a necessary purpose, but shadows loom long."

"Yeah," Buffy breathes. "That one."

"You have seen that woman before, yes? The spirit?" Kendra presses.

"Her, yeah," says Buffy. "Not the girl who was with us."

"She… I… I do not think this is how things are meant to be," says Kendra quietly. "Mr. Zabuto, he did not see you, not the first time I came to Sunnydale. And this time, this time I came back to things… cleared out. And now I dream all the time of butterflies. They were in my hair…"

"I dream about them too," Buffy says. "All the time."

"Since you… died?" Kendra asks her. Buffy almost says yes, but that's not right. She blinks away memories of the Master's hands on her neck and of cold water, and thinks that she'd dreamt of them before, months before. They'd gotten worse, yes, after she'd died, but…

"No, I don't think it's about dying," she says, and tries not to think of Kendra's limp body in the hallway of Ms. Calendar's apartment building, vampire dust and symbols written in blood… "I think it's, it's something else. I don't know what, but if we both see them… It's something we have in common. We should, should collaborate." They are both silent for a moment, and she hears Kendra take a deep breath.

"Do you know the tarot, Buffy?" she asks.

"Not really." Ms. Calendar probably does. Maybe Giles does? "Why?"

"The card of Death, it symbolizes change, a … transformation. Cosmic shift. If it is not about dying, then it is maybe about Death."

"Transformation?" Buffy echoes. Giles is frowning, but whatever, she'll ask him later. "Well, I mean, as long as it's a transformation for the good."

"I do not know," says Kendra. Buffy puts her cheerleader voice on.

"Yeah, like, we're getting all transformed from shadow-wrought-y to whatever the other thing is so we can save the world a lot, maybe?" It feels like a stretch, but maybe it's nice thing coming for them. Maybe.

"If you think so," says Kendra dubiously. "It is only that… I am worried."

"We'll keep in touch," Buffy assures her. "You're definitely allowed to call me—and my Watcher. Because Slayer business." So she makes sure Kendra has her phone number and Giles's phone number and comes away from the chat with way more questions than she had to begin with.

"Transformation?" Giles asks.

"In tarot. Kendra says death means transformation." Giles nods slowly, still frowning. "And I think there's a new Slayer. Because Kendra sort of died. But she's fine now." Giles takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, then puts the glasses back on and says.

"Well then. I'm sure the Council– well, I'm sure the Council is already aware."

"Do they get Slayer memos?" Buffy asks.

"I, er, assume so," says Giles, and then he makes himself a cup of tea.

—

So after she escapes a Giles interrogation (no, Giles, I can't recognize where she was from the type of pavement, what do you think I am?) her mind is swirling with thoughts of transformation and tarot cards and butterflies and new Slayers and Angel and Borneo, wherever the hell that is. She wanders down the street, looking in windows but not really seeing anything, lost in thought.

And then she has to double back because something she saw three windows ago pierces through her mental fog all at once, because holy crap that's Ms. Calendar. And yeah, okay, she wants to think about not-supernatural problems, so here's one:

Ms. Calendar is sitting in a coffee shop with Principal Wood. Two cups of coffee, not to-go, and one extra-large muffin that Ms. Calendar is picking at while she laughs at something the principal says. Her lipstick is very red and her hair is done up all curly, and she looks actually happy. Principal Wood grins and nods at her, then reaches across the table to steal a piece of the muffin. Ms. Calendar swats at his hand, still amused, and Buffy feels sort of rooted to the spot. And then Ms. Calendar half-turns toward the window, and Buffy bolts entirely on Slayer-instinct, because no way is she going to be caught spying.

Well, that's another thing to freak out about, then. She drops wearily into a seat in the ice cream parlor and wonders where her stupid life went wrong. Probably approximately when she learned she had a Destiny, yes, that would do it. If she could just–

"Hey, it's the Buffster!" Xander tries to hop a railing to join her, fails miserably, and takes down two chairs while Jesse laughs hysterically. Yeah, she'd need to just get clean out of town if wanted to escape this. Possibly clean out of state.

"You okay?" she asks.

"Great floor we've got here," says Xander weakly. "Very comfy. You should try it."

"Uh-huh."

"Dunno, I prefer chairs," says Jesse, who takes the long way around, picks the chairs back up, and sort of hoists Xander into one. Xander promptly shoves him so hard he falls over, and Buffy rolls her eyes.

"Only two stooges today, guys? Where's Willow?" Jesse stops pretending to die (one hand still clasped over the scar on his neck where he'd been bitten), and Xander makes a face.

"Summer homework," they say, almost at the same time.

"Says she can't go anywhere," Jesse adds. "Too much reading."

"I mean, we're in most of the same classes, right? And I'm not doing any reading," says Xander.

"That doesn't mean much," Jesse points out, and Xander pretends to stake him.

"No, but seriously, don't know how she can study at a time like this!" Xander says, and he looks almost serious. "I mean, we've got only a little summer left, and there's still stuff we need to do. People stuff."

"Like getting all up in our teachers' business?" Jesse asks archly, and Xander looks a bit guilty.

"C'mon," he says. "Not like we want Giles sad, right?"

"Not like it's our job," Jesse points out. Buffy takes a deep breath and counts to ten to calm herself, by which she means she take a deep breath, counts to three, and blurts:

"I saw Ms. Calendar having coffee with the principal!"

"Really?" Jesse suddenly looks interested. "Coffee or like, coffee?"

"And how with?" Xander adds.

"They were having a sit-down coffee," Buffy elaborates, miming two cups in front of her. "And a muffin, there was a muffin."

"There's baked goods?" Jesse asks. "That's bad."

"Yeah, see," says Xander. "Coffee's just a beverage, but muffins? Muffins mean things, Buff!"

"I know!" she hisses. Muffins are edging toward date territory. "I just–" And then she stops, because Willow just walked in. Willow with her hair cut boyishly short and a binder clutched in her arms. They make uncomfortable eye contact over the boys' heads, and Willow offers an awkward half-smile and starts to make her way over.

"Muffins mean all kinds of things," Jesse says. "I mean, depends on the kind–"

"If it's buttered," Xander adds. "Do you think he's buttering her muffin?"

"It's like roses, dude," says Jesse. "Like, colors and stuff."

"Is Wood buttering her muffin?" Xander continues. "I mean, if they're going out I bet Wood is all up in her muffin oh god please stop me I can't stop talking about Ms. Calendar's–" Willow's binder makes contact with the back of his head, and Xander yelps. Jesse almost jumps out of his chair.

"Will!"

"Leave Ms. Calendar alone," Willow says flatly. "We've been really mean to her. You don't need to be disgusting about it."

"Ow, hey, good morning." Xander rubs the back of his head. "Ow." Jesse has a sudden coughing fit that sounds like the sentence 'you had it coming,' and Xander stops moping and elbows him really hard. Jesse elbows back, and they're back to play-fighting in the blink of an eye. Buffy sighs.

"New haircut, Will?" Or maybe another glamour? "Looks cute!" Willow smiles a bit more brightly.

"It's even permanent! Until it grows out, I mean, so not really, but still." She hesitates, still hugging the binder. "I'm sorry I ran off, yesterday. I didn't mean… I was just… I just want everything okay again."

"Hey, I'm the one who yelled at you," Buffy points out. "So it's really me who should be sorry. Which I am. Sorry." That sounds almost as disjointed as Xander's muffin rant, but Willow just bounces on her toes and bites her lip.

"Are we okay now? Can we have ice cream and, and be not-yelling now?" she asks. "I don't want us to be yelling now." And okay, sure, that's one less issue. Buffy grins and stands to loop her arm through Willow's.

"Totally okay now," she says. "And now ice cream, because I got a letter from Angel and I need to tell you everything." Willow's whole face lights up.

"Omigosh, really? What did he say? Is he okay? Is he coming back? Are you gonna go see him? Where even is he?"

"Ice cream first," Buffy insists. "He's in Borneo, where's Borneo?"


	10. 1998, End of Summer

Giles and Ms. Calendar aren't getting all that back together, but Chuxi swears she's seen them talking (no yelling! no tears!) and Giles, at least, seems more at ease. It's something. It means that Ms. Calendar is probably not moving on in the arms of the principal. She tells Willow it's enough. Willow hums and raises her gaze from her notes (Greek and Latin and some things Buffy can't recognize) to offer Buffy a crooked smile.

"It's a start," she says. "Starts are good." There's something weird about that smile, something that doesn't look quite Willow.

"You okay?" she asks. Willow tilts her head and closes her binder.

"Uh-huh! Why?" Maybe it's the new haircut that's throwing her, but even Willow's voice sounds flatter than normal.

"Because I'm your friend, silly," Buffy says instead of pointing that out. "Remember the big deal we made out of that?" She gives Willow her best cheerleader smile and loops an arm around her shoulders. "And you're being all..." Not mopey exactly... "All doom!" Willow giggles.

"No doom here, promise!" she says. "I just have a lot of work. Su-Summer reading and stuff."

"Uh-huh," Buffy says, eying the binder skeptically. "Does Giles have you learning Latin and stuff, or is there an actual class for that?" Willow's face goes panicky for a moment, just a moment, before she smiles really big.

"Ms. Calendar, actually," she says. "She was telling me about some of the spells she's studied, wards and things, so I'm studying too. Don't tell Giles, okay? I want to surprise him-and also, I mean, it's Ms. Calendar..."

"Yeah," says Buffy, thinking that that would be a completely believable explanation minus the moment panic and the fact that she's pretty sure Ms. Calendar hasn't talked to Willow since the beach incident. If Willow's lying to her, it's not being a bad friend to lie right back, is it? "That's pretty cool actually. So that's all wardy-stuff?" Willow nods and hugs the binder to her chest again, like it's something really really precious.

"It's all wardy-stuff," Willow confirms. "Y'know, super secret!"

"Super secret," Buffy says with a smile. "Promise."

—

She doesn't run to Giles, even though she wants to, she really wants to. Instead she goes and knocks on Ms. Calendar's door with a prepared apology for beach-related nonsense and a mild worry that Willow may have been telling the truth after all. Ms. Calendar looks at her warily when she answers the door.

"Uh, hi," says Buffy all smart-like.

"Hey." To her credit, Ms. Calendar is really good at keeping a straight face. "Are you... do you need something, Buffy?"

"Yeah– well no– Listen, I wanted to say sorry but also to ask you a completely random question?" So much for the preparing. Ms. Calendar sort of smirks.

"Completely random, you say?" she asks, and Buffy fights the urge to wince. She sounds like a dumb kid and she knows it. "And you're on my doorstep at that. Gotta be urgent. You want to come in?" Buffy hesitates in the doorway. Ms. Calendar's place looks very not-trashed, but still...

"Have you been teaching Willow magic?" she blurts out. "Because she's got this big binder-thing full of stuff I can't read in Latin and Greek – I can recognize those – and some other languages too and she said it's wards and things that you're teaching her and not to tell Giles but if it's not you I really should tell Giles because she's been acting weird lately and I'm sort of worried about her!"

"What?" says Ms. Calendar all flat-like. "I... She said the language homework was from Rupert. All I did was talk her through some of the theory." She frowns. "Are you certain she said I was...?" Buffy nods.

"She said it wasn't for Giles." Of course she said that, the voice in the back of Buffy's mind points out. The first thing Buffy'd do if she thought Giles was giving her friends summer work would be to go argue with him about it, and then he'd tell her it wasn't him. And she'd been banking on Buffy not going to Ms. Calendar, or maybe on Ms. Calendar shutting the door on Buffy's face... But she didn't. Shut the door. In fact, Ms. Calendar grabs Buffy by the shoulder and sort of propels her into the very clean and chalk-pattern-free living room. "Ms. Calendar? Do you know what's going on?"

"No," says Ms. Calendar grimly. "But I have a pretty good idea." And she shoves a soda into Buffy's hand and makes for the phone. (It's creepy Ethan, isn't it?)

Seems like the first number doesn't work, so Ms. Calendar frowns deeper and tries another one. That gets her nothing, again, and Buffy's sort of starting to worry. At the third number Ms. Calendar gets a real person on the phone.

"Hi there," Ms. Calendar says, in a voice that suggests she couldn't do cheerleader if her life depended on it. "I'm trying to track down a former guest of yours, could you help me out?" She pauses. "Yeah, sure– R-A-Y-N-E– what?" (Yep, it's creepy Ethan. Buffy's hardcore judging Giles's taste in ex-friends and low-key judging Willow's taste in tutors.) Her expression gets straight-up murderous as she listens. "And that clearly struck you as wrong, since you brought it up, but you just… what? Hoped it'd go away?" Another pause. "No, I'm not her mother. Her mother would be calling the police, not you–Oh, yeah, yeah that makes everything better. Are you listening to yourself?"

She keep going like this for a while, but eventually wrings yet another phone number and an address from her hapless victim before she slams the phone down.

"Didja find creepy Ethan?" Buffy asks. Ms. Calendar shakes her head but sort of grins.

"Is that just his name now?" Buffy nods. "Good. I'd've said slimy, but it works. Don't have a forwarding address, do have his credit card information. I can leave the creep high and dry, wherever he is." Buffy grins back, and she knows she looks way too happy about that.

In the end, Ms. Calendar even ends up calling Giles to tell him about the whole mess, and it's almost a win because she laughs when she's on the phone with him. (It's not a solution for whatever up with Willow. That'll be a problem for later.)

—

The thing that's a problem for right now immediately is that someone's been trying to summon demons at the local pool. It's in the men's locker room, whatever it is, and Giles gripes about unsanitary conditions for magic.

"Oh yeah," says Xander, "because you need your demons summoned in nest of disinfectant wipes."

"Well, it's a ritual," says Willow. "If you get gross things on your ritual, it can go wrong."

"Er, yes," says Giles. "That isn't incorrect." Willow looks very pleased with herself.

Whoever had been trying to do a ritual in there had definitely gotten gross stuff all over it. The summoning circle has dirty towels and what smells like hair gel mixed with chlorine, and Giles makes a face that's somewhere between amusement and physical pain and takes his glasses off.

"I… don't think this would've worked?" says Willow uncertainly. "Giles, it's not closed, is it?" Giles reluctantly puts his glasses back on.

"No," he confirms. "But the troubling part is that what is there is er, is formatted aptly. Done correctly, it would summon a minor demon, a sort of imp. If one were seeking to, er…" He trails off, but Buffy thinks she gets the gist.

"Just the thing for the beginner evil sorcerer, right? Not too big and scary, but probably really gross looking?" She pokes the summoning circle with her toe. Giles nods.

"That is one way to describe it," he says.

"Cool," says Buffy. "Xander, we're gonna need you and Jesse to babysit the whoever it is. Really, really don't need anyone summoning demons in this town."

"W-what are we gonna do?" Willow asks. Buffy loops her arm around her with as much flair as she can (because ew, gross locker room smell).

"Well, we can't hang out here, Will, we're girls! I guess we have to try to find the sorcerer poolside!" That way, they can look cute, get tan, and come to the rescue when Xander and Jesse start getting their asses kicked.

—

Xander and Jesse do not get their asses kicked, because the evil sorcerer is a fifteen-year-old with day-old bruises on his cheek who folds in the face of their bluster. By the time they're all outside and out of the way, the kid looks like he's about to cry and Jesse is flipping through his demon summoning book with with interest.

"Is this like, Demon Summoning for Dummies?" he asks. "I figure we could pull of these off."

"It's a fine art," whines the kid.

"Um, it's, um, technically a dark art," says Willow, and the kid sniffles at her. Buffy pats her on the head.

"What we're saying is please don't summon demons in locker rooms–" she starts.

"Or bathrooms! Also unsanitary!" Willow adds.

"Will, priorities," says Xander.

"–in locker rooms or anywhere else," Buffy says through gritted teeth. "I mean, seriously, what were you planning to accomplish?" The kid folds his arms and tries to look imposing, which really doesn't work.

"Gonna beat Tucker to the punch," he mutters. "Tucker's lame." Who's Tucker? Buffy's not sure.

"Tucker's summoning demons too?" Willow asks innocently, and the kid fidgets.

"Yeah," he says. "He's got some grand plan. Hellhounds and glorious vengeance." Jesse stops leafing through Demon Summoning for Dummies.

"Right, well," says Buffy. "Screw that."

She hits Tucker, who's in her class and kind of a creep even without the glorious vengeance, so hard he goes through a chair, collects all the demon-summony stuff, and goes to deliver it and the boys to Giles. Ms. Calendar intercepts her.

"Hi, I need to talk to these two," Ms. Calendar says very firmly. Tucker tries to scowl, the effect of which is totally ruined by the fact that he looks like he's been put through a chair. The younger kid puts his hood up. Buffy must look dubious, because Ms. Calendar grimaces. "What do you think England will do to them, hm? Give them a stern lecture?"

"I did already confiscate the books," Buffy admits. Ms. Calendar makes a there-you-go noise, grips Tucker by the back of the neck to steer him, and offers the kid something akin to a smile.

"You're gonna come quietly, right Andrew?" she says.

"No," says the kid.

"Okay." Ms. Calendar shrugs and turns to leave, propelling Tucker in front of her, and after a moment Andrew gives chase.

"Wait! Don't go without me!" (Oh yeah. Evil sorcerer, right there.)

—

Suddenly it's almost the start of the next school year. The thought is downright bizarre-she's gotten used to summer as a routine, to late mornings and late nights and dreams full of butterflies and tropical views. Giles has to go to school staff meetings all of a sudden, he's not there to bother all the time, and the whole town starts to buzz with back-to-schoolness. Little kids buying new backpacks. Discount calculators and Halloween costumes. That sort of thing.

"We're gonna be seniors," she tells Willow on a golden afternoon. "That's weird."

"Almost grownups!" says Willow with a grin like she's making a joke. "Scary." It's not a joke though, though the idea of all of them, especially Willow, technically being adults is all kinds of terrifying.

"Almost made it," says Buffy. Slayers so rarely live to adulthood. Slayers so rarely live, but she's already died hasn't she? Now she and Kendra and the dark-haired girl she'd been dreaming of have fighting chance to live, and she has a fighting chance to live to eighteen. (And then what? College? Doesn't matter. She'll handle the then when it comes.) Willow's expression turns serious and she grabs Buffy's hands.

"You'll make it," she says. "All of us will. To-to graduation and college and new frontiers." The air hums with something that she'd not be able to catch without Slayer-hearing. "That's a promise, okay? I promise."

"Will, come on. It's not on you if something happens. It's the Hellmouth, or prophecy, or something." She pauses. "That sounded a lot more doom out loud than it did in my head."

"S'okay," says Willow. "We'll kick the doom's butt."

"Always do!" says Buffy, and she hopes for minimal doom in her immediate future. Like, pocket-sized doom. That'd be ideal.

—

The doom is not pocket sized. The doom is actually roughly the size of a Prechian demon, according to Giles, mostly because it is a Prechian demon. A small pack of them. Someone's gone and sicced them on the football team, which Buffy thinks is all kinds of stupid because, well, the football team sort of sucks but it doesn't suck enough to be worth killing over. It's just sort of moderately lame. Anyway, Buffy finds out about the Prechian demons in the middle of trying to bake an angel food cake. It's not a really successful cake to begin with, but she's all covered in flour when the phone rings and her mom picks it up.

"Oh, hello sweetie," says her mom. "Of course I'll put Buffy on- Honey! It's Willow calling for you!" Buffy tries to clean her hands and thinks that flour gets everywhere way worse than vamp dust. Would be harder to wash out of her clothes too.

"Hey," she says.

"Hi Buffy, there's a demon loose on the school and I'm in the principal's office," says Willow.

"But it's still like July," says Buffy unhappily, even though it's August. "We're not supposed to have school demons until school starts."

"I tried to tell it," says Willow. "It didn't listen."

"But I'm baking a cake, and I have flour hands." Okay, now she's just whining. Even as she says it she wipes the last of the flour off her hands and snags her slaying bag which now lives within safe distance of the phone. There's another under her bed, another in the basement, and a mini kit in her favorite purse.

"Ooh, what kind?" Willow asks, suddenly perky.

"Doesn't matter. It's ruined because of stupid demon." Her mom holds up two different knives, a meat cleaver and jagged knife for cutting bread, and makes a questioning gesture. "Any clues as to how to kill it?"

"Sorry. Giles said something about ritualistic slaying?" Is it the demons doing the slaying or are there dead bodies already?

"Oh," says Buffy. She sighs. "Mom, can I just take both?"

—

She finds the demons, because by the time she gets there there's two of them, stringing up members of the football team in the boys' locker room. There's also a sort of ritual circle drawn in something she really hopes isn't blood. The guys are all alive, if terrified, and Buffy thinks she should maybe chalk one up to the ritualistic slayings by demons because rituals? They take forever. The football players dangle upside down as Buffy hacks the demons to pieces. Not a lot of things can recover from that. (Also it makes her feel better about the fact that she's been scratched and kicked all over. Lucky she doesn't bruise easily.)

"Are there any others?" she asks the boys once she's through with the chopping and the rescuing. (And the wrecking the summoning circle, that bit too. It's drawn in blood. She ignores it for now since nobody seems to be dead.)

"I uh, I think there were three of them..." says Number 12.

"Cool," she says. "You guys sit here and lock the doors, okay?"

"... Cordelia said the school had a superhero," says Number 4. Did she? That's sort of sweet.

"Yeah," says Buffy. "Sure. I'm Powergirl." She doesn't know why all the guys exchange looks at that.

—

Demon three is trying to bash down the door of the faculty lounge. She remembers Giles saying something about the pre-school year faculty meeting today. Buffy draws its attention, and as soon as it turns around the door opens and Principal Wood shoots it through the head with a crossbow. Buffy grins at him and makes with the disemboweling. It helps when the adults around her are sort of competent.

"I think that's all of them," she says, once the demon is in a half dozen pieces. "You okay in there?"

"Just fine," says Wood. "Coffee and muffins and a comparative lack of attempted murder." He smiles thinly. "For some reason this school has doors one couldn't take down with a battering ram." Buffy almost has something smart to say back about Ms. Calendar and muffins when she hears someone scream from down the hall.

"Maybe not all of them," she says wearily. "Gotta run." (Number 12 is gonna get a remedial math class this year if she has any say in it. Which she doesn't, but whatever.)

Demon four is in the library (which doesn't have a Giles in it! What gives?) with a ritual dagger and lots of blood and Tucker goddamn Wells. The truth of the matter is that she'd sort of be okay with Tucker getting sacrificed over the Hellmouth if it didn't sort of imply Hellmouthy things afoot. Well, she'd probably be okay with Tucker getting stabbed, that's the point. As it stands...

"Hey, ugly!" she yells. Both Tucker and the demon look up at her, she'll laugh about that later. "This is a no ritual slaying zone!"

"It's a Hellmouth," says Tucker.

"Well, yeah," Buffy says back, and then 400-plus pounds of angry pig sort of charges past her and knocks down both Tucker and the demon with a deafening angry farm animal noise. She's not sure which of them is more surprised but whatever, Hellmouth, right? She's seen Herbert try to mow down vampires before, and this probably isn't really different to him. (Maybe pigs can smell demon? Maybe it's just the Hellmouth.) Point is, Herbert sort of sits on Tucker (who's not going anywhere anyway because he looks pretty messed up) while Buffy not-ritualistically-slays the fourth demon out back. Giles doesn't tolerate blood or Cheeto dust on his books. Buffy may have already broken the Cheeto dust rule.

—

Tucker's going to be in a world of trouble when Giles and Ms. Calendar find out what he's done, only when she drags him back to the faculty lounge after one last sweep of the school (which included rescuing Willow who was figuring out how to make an unplugged pencil sharpener run and freeing the football team) she finds out they're not there. Willow squeaks in distress.

"Oh no, not the librarian," Tucker says, every word dripping with sarcasm. "Whatever will we do?" Principal Wood glares at him and he visibly deflates.

"You will sit here until the police arrive. A criminal record will keep you out of Miskatonic, if not out of trouble. Buffy, if the school is clear we can organize a search. I'm sure Mr. Giles and Ms. Calendar are competent people."

They're competent people that somehow got trapped in a janitor's closet for multiple hours. By the time Buffy finds them Giles is flustered and has Ms. Calendar's lipstick on his earlobe and Ms. Calendar is flushed and beaming like everything's totally okay. And, well, much as she doesn't want to think about them kissing (or worse!) it's sort of super that they're apparently back together now.

"Hm," says Giles, examining one of the dead demons and being all Watchery to make up for the ear lipstick and the fact that his shirt is really rumpled. "It appears to be a Prechian demon. I think we were quite lucky this was only a small pack of them."

"Eh," she says. "I could take 'em."

"Yes, well, er, I'm not doubting your abilities, of course," says Giles. Willow is happily feeding Herbert potato chips off to the side, and Buffy grins.

"Besides, you know, I had backup." (And she doesn't think too hard about how the school mascot wound up being more useful than the entire football team.)


	11. 1998, Fall (1)

Her mom gets some sort of shipment of Nigerian(?) things-of-ritual and has to be dissuaded from hanging the ugliest mask ever up in the house. Looking at the thing gives Buffy the heebie-jeebies.

"Alright, fine, so it's not really the California aesthetic," says her mom laughing. "But really Buffy, just because you're not interested in tribal art doesn't mean it's evil."

(It's evil. Of course it's evil.)

Zombies crash a gallery event and her mom clocks one on the head with a ceremonial club-thing that's probably meant for head-clocking now that Buffy thinks about it. Ceremonial head-clocking. The problem with zombies, though, is that unlike vampires they just keep coming if you knock them down, and there's not a lot of zombie-rekilling equipment in the gallery.

"They are being reanimated by a demon called the Ovu Mobani. Keep them away from the mask!" Giles instructs on the phone. Buffy stares helplessly up at the wall of stupid tribal masks and the marching hordes of the undead and sighs.

"Yeah. Sure thing. No problem," she says. "Piece of cake." Not like there aren't tons of masks in here. Maybe her mother should put on a show about cultures that don't raise the dead.

She bars all the entrances and windows and plays whack-a-zombie with her mom for like half an hour before Giles calls back and suggests she take out the mask's eyes. (Still without specifying which one, of course.) She yanks the sketchy mask down from its place and snaps it in two at the eye-area and finally, finally the zombies vanish.

"Okay, cool," she says wearily. "I think that's it."

"That was exciting," says her mom, who sounds like she's never been less excited about something in her life. "I think I understand why the previous owners left." She sighs, sets the ceremonial club back in its case and dumps the broken mask (unceremoniously) in the trash. "I'll just… let everyone out of the storage room now."

"They trashed the canapés," says Buffy unhappily, she'd been looking forward to those. Oh well. Vanishing zombie corpses means they won't be vampires, right? Right. It's a win.

"Who were those people?" asks a slightly dazed looking man wearing a bowtie (a bowtie!) and Buffy's mom laughs self-consciously.

"Oh you know," she says. "This town and its gang problems." Someone suggests taking it up with the mayor and getting an increased police presence in the downtown area.

"I think we just need new alarm system," says her mom airily. "Buffy, dear, won't you see what sort Mr. Giles recommends?" (Giles, when asked, polishes his glasses and mutters something about Americans and their concept of art. Ms. Calendar chucks a pillow at him and calls him stuffy. Buffy decides to leave before things get gross.)

—

Willow tells her, downright joyfully, that Oz is going to have to do his senior year over again because he doesn't have enough art credits.

"I don't know why being in a band doesn't count," Willow notes, then shrugs. "That means we get him for at least one more semester! Isn't that great?"

"Super," says Buffy, who is trying not to worry about the state of her own credits or groan at the thought of Willow-and-Oz smoochies happening at random times in hallways for yet another year She is so over this single thing. "That's really great. Do you think he can get them all done in a semester?"

"I hope not!" Willow chirps.

—

Buffy dreams about Angel sitting in a coffee shop in the middle of a jungle. He's drinking a very big mug of blood and reading. She tries to will herself into the seat across from him, but instead Spike and Drusilla wander over and sit with him.

"Look what you've gone and done, you idiot," says Spike. "And we were having so much fun!" Angel sighs and puts his book down.

"You know, it wasn't my idea," says Angel. "Besides, I've been away a long time." He frowns. "How did you find me?" Spike gestures vaguely at Drusilla, who is staring dazedly at the ceiling.

"Don't you hear them whispering?" Drusilla asks. "They call for you, for both of you. Do you know why?"

"No," says Angel shortly. "Can't you leave me alone?"

"Now why would you say that, Angelus?" Spike asks. Angel takes his mug of blood and his book and moves to another table.

"Don't worry, love," says Drusilla to a scowling Spike. "He'll come back soon, just the way you like him. It goes around and around and around, but what is written down? It's down, down, down." She giggles, then suddenly she and Buffy are alone in the Bronze, lit only by votive candles along the walls.

"Hey, bring Angel back!" Buffy snaps, half at Drusilla and half at the dream itself.

"Oh, but it won't be me who takes him away," Drusilla answers, twirling in place in a way that makes her black lace veil float. "I saw it, you know. They need Angelus to make things go tick-tock, and it all hasn't been clicking together."

"I won't let them!" says Buffy. "Anyone who wants to take Angel's soul away has to go through me!" Drusilla laughs in her face.

"Do they?" she asks. "Or maybe they can go where you don't look. No one can look everywhere, not even the stars."

Buffy wakes in a cold sweat, but it's just three in the morning and there's school the next day so she forces herself back to sleep and dreams again, this time of the dark-haired Slayer. She's walking through an empty fairground in a thin blue dress. Buffy reaches out to her, and the girl jumps.

"You again?" she asks. "Why do I keep dreaming about you?"

"Because we're both Slayers," Buffy answers. The dark-haired girl blinks.

"Oh," she says. "Are you dead?"

"No," Buffy tells her. "I was for a little, while, so was Kendra, it's complicated, but there's three of us."

"Huh," says the girl. "Watcher's Council really fucked up, didn't they?"

"Kind of," Buffy agrees. "Aren't you cold?" The girl looks down at her dress and grimaces.

"I think it's dream-logic. More of a leather pants girl than the sundress type." The dream feels pointless, but maybe, just maybe there's something she can do here.

"My name's Buffy," she says desperately, and the dark-haired girl looks at her sideways.

"You're not supposed to do that, you know," she says. Buffy shrugs and folds her arms, vaguely aware of the fact that she's wearing clothes she doesn't own—torn up jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Dream-logic. (Maybe that's how the other Slayer dresses, because Buffy really is the sundress type.)

"Yeah well, I'm not a child of the Powers. I do what I want." The other girl raises her eyebrows.

"I don't know what that means," she says, then offers her a crooked grin. "Way more like what dreams usually sound like, though."

"I don't know what it means either," Buffy tells her, and the girl laughs so hard she has to sit down on the edge of a stopped carousel.

"Okay," she says. "I'm Faith. Is that what you wanted, blondie?"

"Yeah," says Buffy. "Okay. Faith. Listen, I need to–"

And then her alarm goes off. (Ugh.)

—

Willow tells her fourteen times that they can go off campus for lunch now before lunch finally rolls around and spends all of fourth period calculating how far they can walk to and have time to eat and come back without being late. It's a bit obsessive, and Buffy ends up tuning her out. Doesn't Oz have a van? Shouldn't she be bothering him with all of this?

"It just tastes like freedom," says Willow happily, bouncing on her toes at the edge of campus. She seems to be counting down the seconds. "We can leave!"

"Yeah, but like, you like school," says Jesse not entirely unreasonably. Willow rolls her eyes at him and then the bell rings to signal the official start of lunch and Willow sort of pirouettes off of the curb and into the street.

"Come on! We need to make optimal use of our time!" she calls. "If we jog at a constant rate we can get milkshakes!"

"I'm in," says Oz, who looks more than a bit amused by the whole thing.

(They get back to school exactly, by Willow's calculations, one minute and thirty-two seconds late. Willow tries and fails to look not upset by this.)

—

There are flyers up for the Official Sunnydale High School Extracurricular Wicca Club, which Ms. Calendar is apparently in charge of.

"Magic club?" Buffy asks her after school. Ms. Calendar is printing things and sorting them into disorganized piles. Buffy catches words like "pre-Christian Pagan Suppression" and "Murray-thesis on the Devil". Maybe it was true that couples who spend a lot of time together start to blend, because this looks a lot more like Giles-type stuff.

"Magic theory club." Ms. Calendar explains as she moves things around and taps a couple of buttons on her computer. "Given the Hellmouth and the apocalypse and the demon summoning and the cheerleading incident, Robin and I agreed it would be a good idea to give students somewhere safe to learn these things."

"Well, yeah," says Buffy. "Sort of figured we didn't have one for a reason, though. Dunno what reason." Sort of figured Giles would run this sort of thing. Why wasn't Giles running this thing, actually, instead of Ms. Calendar plotting behind his back over muffins with Principal Wood? Also when did Principal Wood become Robin?

"A 'people are stupid, burying their heads in the sand' reason," says Ms. Calendar. "The first meeting is on Thursday after school—You're welcome to come."

"Is Giles gonna come?" she asks. Ms. Calendar sighs and sets down a new stack of papers. This one is on trees, Buffy figures that is better.

"Nah. I think he's a bit gun-shy about the whole magic thing." Neither of them says it but Buffy is pretty sure they're both thinking about Eyghon.

—

She sees the dark-haired Slayer, Faith, at the Bronze that night. Faith's trashy dancing with a vampire, but she catches Buffy's eye across the room and looks so surprised that the vampire looks over too. He asks Faith something and she stakes him before he finishes his sentence before practically running over.

"Heya Blondie. Do I know you?" she asks, fake-casual. In person, she really is the leather pants type of girl, with dark lipstick and thick eyeliner. It's to make her look older, Buffy thinks. The Faith in her dream had looked barely fifteen, with a puppy-round face and big scared eyes. The makeup makes her look Buffy's age or even older.

"Yeah," she says. "Faith, right? I'm Buffy. Sundress type, dream logic aside." Faith stares for a long moment, then grins and grabs Buffy by the shoulders.

"You're real," she says. "Sweet. Okay. Sweet. Thought I was going crazy." She takes a deep breath and laughs quietly. "You and whatshername, Kendra. Three of us, huh?"

"Three of us," says Buffy. "Kinda nuts."

"You kidding, B?" says Faith. "We're gonna have so much fun!"

—

Everyone likes Faith. Buffy's pretty sure they like Faith more than they like her. Maybe it's because Buffy's never wrestled an alligator or rescued a bus full of nuns while naked. Maybe it's because they like Faith's leather pants. Maybe it's because Faith's Watcher is cool enough to go back to England for some sort of Watcher Event that Giles doesn't get invited to.

"It's probably because of the, the Eyghon thing," says Willow, then she goes pale. "Not that I think it's a good reason for him to to get invited to Watcher thingies! I think he's very—Giles is a great Watcher and the Council is stupid for doubting him!" Buffy kind of wants to kick her.

"What's an eye-go?" Faith asks, and Willow goes even paler, then goes pink, then puts her face in her hands.

"Not a problem," she mutters.

"Demon," says Buffy. "It's dead now. The Council's probably grouchy because he dealt with it without clearance." That's… almost true, if you turn your head and squint a bit. Faith nods and loses interest.

She's less not-interested when she meets Giles (who apparently really really wanted to go on that retreat and has been complaining to his girlfriend about it), and is even more interested when she meets Ms. Calendar.

"Didn't know Watchers could have girlfriends," she says, grinning really wide. "Actually, pretty sure the Council doesn't allow that." Buffy would love to see the actual fine print where it says Watchers can't have girlfriends. But that would require thinking about Giles and Ms. Calendar having…more than smoochies. Nope.

"Yeah well, the Council's in England," says Ms. Calendar dismissively. Giles hides a smile, takes off her glasses and adds:

"Yes, quite. The Council, er, well. Truthfully I, er, I do what I want." Buffy is totally convinced.

"That's the spirit, England," says Ms. Calendar, and kisses him on the cheek. Giles flushes, Willow makes a quiet awww noise, and Faith snorts.

"Yeah, we're badass," says Buffy, very aware of the little pink flowers on her miniskirt. "C'mon, Faith. Gotta tell the principal you're here."

"The principal? Does the whole town know about Slayers?" Faith asks.

"Yeah, except for how no," says Buffy. "Look, it's a mess. Welcome to Sunnydale."

—

Neither Principal Wood or Giles can get ahold of Faith's Watcher, so Buffy ends up calling Kendra instead of going out to lunch. (Kendra's Watcher really is a jerk, but there's no rule about Slayers communicating.)

"We had zombies," Buffy says. "Also I found her." And then she puts Kendra on speakerphone and the three of them put their heads together for an hour.

"Perhaps we could make a system of this," says Kendra. "To compare notes on our work each week?"

"I'm game," Buffy says, shooting a glance at Faith. The girl is staring at the phone as though she could will Kendra into the library with them, and for a moment she looks exactly like the scared kid from Buffy's dream.

"Yeah," Faith says distantly. "Sure. Sure."

—

Faith's Watcher isn't in England for a retreat. Faith's Watcher is dead, tortured to death by a vampire that's as old as the Master or older. The vampire's named Kakistos, and the name is enough to make Faith look sick. This whole thing comes out in the school parking lot in front of Ms. Calendar's VW Bug while Giles waves a book and talks about cloven feet.

"Fine," says Ms. Calendar. "Not the first ancient baddie we've taken out. Faith, you can stay at my place tonight, and tomorrow we'll see about tracking him down and killing him." Faith looks sort of floored.

"He–" she starts, but Ms. Calendar waves a hand to cut her off.

"Hey, I know what I'm doing, alright? And that thing will be looking for you, not me, so this is the safest way."

"Kakistos is a very powerful creature," says Giles, in a tone that suggests he knows he's already lost the argument.

"Yep," says Ms. Calendar. "But he's still a vampire. And we're going to kick his ass. That's what we do."

—

(Faith spends the night on Ms. Calendar's sofa, because there's safety in numbers. Also because, no way is Ms. Calendar going to let a teenage girl on the run from an ancient monstrosity crash in the sort of skeevy motel that's frequented by chaos worshippers.)

Buffy dreams she's sitting on a picnic blanket in a green field. She has a basket full of weapons, but also forks, and she knows she's waiting for someone. After a moment, Kendra joins her, and then Faith.

"Is this a talking to people dream?" Faith asks. They're all not wearing their normal clothes, Buffy realizes—she's in that damn dress again and Kendra and Faith have matching ones, one blue and one green.

"Yes, I think," says Kendra, and a butterfly alights on her nose. "Oh."

"This is interesting," says the armored woman, appearing out of thin air. "Quite, quite interesting."

"Are we having another apocalypse?" Buffy asks, and the armored woman laughs.

"No, none of that," she says. "It's quiet tonight. Perhaps not tomorrow, but tonight." She tilts her head, looking down at them. "What have you brought?"

The three girls empty out their baskets—stakes and knives and a crossbow and practice weapons. The armored woman shakes her head.

"That's not enough, not nearly enough," she says. Kendra sort of hugs Mr. Pointy. "Not for the battle. You cannot go forth as children."

"We aren't," says Faith. "We're not kids, okay?"

"How do you want us to go forth?" Buffy asks, brushing a dream butterfly away from her face. "I mean, you're here for a reason."

"This is a place of duality," says the armored woman. "Look forward and look backward. Stand together, but rely on yourself. It is never simple, and I cannot provide a simple solution, but if you turn far enough to the left you find yourself facing right."

"So you turn in other ways," says Kendra firmly. "North and South, East and West. Those are simpler."

"Yes," says the armored woman. "But a compass can be fooled. Chart your path by the stars and strike true before your are lost. It's time to wake up now."

—

Faith stakes Kakistos with a straight-up column, and then she stands there like she doesn't know what to do at all. Buffy remembers dying in cold water and sobbing uncontrollably into Angel's shoulder once the Master's bones were ground to dust, and she pulls the younger Slayer into a hug.

"You did it," she says firmly. "Struck true and stuff." Faith takes a shuddering breath and manages to giggle.

"Don't get sentimental on me, B," she says. (She cries six hours later, wearing Ms. Calendar's old pjs and a blanket and drinking warm milk with honey on Ms. Calendar's couch with all the windows covered up to keep the world out. Jenny Calendar may be the quintessential modern woman, but Janna Kalderash helped raise lots of younger siblings and cousins and Faith is only fifteen, after all.)

"Didja dust him?" Willow asks on the phone that night, and Buffy briefly considers taking the credit for the kill. Briefly.

"Faith did. She was badass."

"Oh," says Willow. "But I bet you softened him up for her."

"Put a stake in his eyeball," says Buffy honestly, and skips over the part where she also put a stake in his chest region but the stake was too small to take out something that old. Willow giggles.

"Bet he didn't see that coming!"

"Will, that was awful, go to sleep," says Buffy, fighting a smile.

"You could take turns in Disneyland," says Willow quietly, after a pause. "Or normal-person-land. All three of you. Vacations and things. I wonder if vampires can go on rollercoasters."

"Good night, Willow," she says. "Please don't dream about rollercoaster vampires."

And then she dreams she's riding a rollercoaster with Angel in a really big sunhat. Willow is operating it and keeps sending them on even bigger loops and yelling over the intercom that it's for research purposes.

—

That week, Ms. Calendar aggressively enrolls Faith in high school (as a sophomore), the Wicca Club has its first meeting (a success, except for the bit where Amy tries in vain to turn Andrew into a pumpkin), and Scott Hope asks Buffy out (after telling her she's impossible to track down and confirming she's not dating Xander. Or Faith, or Willow).

So it's pretty much a good week. Her first date with Scott is, on a whim, to the nearest planetarium, and she comes home with a book on star charts.

"Going sailing?" Scott teases.

"Maybe," she tells him. "Compasses can get messed up by magnets and things. Stars are always in the same place." It was probably a metaphor, but she could do with knowing her physical course too. After all, she wasn't the one who was a weird dream ghost thing.


	12. 1998, Fall (2)

Willow spends full moon nights in the library, keeping watch over Oz. She's testing spells that would let him sleep through the night without hurting himself or trying to break out, but the best she can manage now is a few hours of rest at a time.

"I read him the _Call of the Wild_ last night," she tells Buffy sleepily. "I think he likes it—the wolf likes it. I wonder if it used to be somewhere else."

"What?"

"The wolf," says Willow vaguely. "I wonder if it knows what the wild is like. Or—or is it just a house-wolf, you know?"

"I think you're thinking too much about this," Buffy tells her.

Faith doesn't come to school that day, which Buffy learns entirely too late is because she got into a fistfight with some sort of demon in the woods and ended up so hurt that Ms. Calendar took her to a hospital. By the time Buffy can escape school to check on her, the Slayer healing has kicked in and she's just bruised up with her arm in a sling.

"You okay?" Buffy asks intelligently. Faith snorts.

"Five-by-five, B," she says. "You should've seen the other guy."

"What was the other guy?" Which is sort of the better question, in her opinion. Faith shrugs.

"Ugly, big, angry, veiny. Claws." Buffy nods encouragingly, but Faith doesn't supply any more adjectives. "Think I scared him."

"Well, that's good. I think." She grins and Faith sort of half-grins back. "I'll see if anything ugly, big, angry, veiny, and beaten up has turned up in town, and make sure he doesn't hurt anyone."

"Be careful," says Faith suddenly. "I whaled on him for a while. Don't know if it did any damage."

"Giles says to go for the eyes in that case," Buffy says.

"Ooh," says Faith appreciatively. "Watcher-man fights dirty!"

—

There is no giant veiny monster (with claws) on the prowl. Not only that, she has to keep the giant veiny monster hunt a secret from Scott, who seems to want to be with her all the time. She doesn't mind being with him a lot of the time, but a girl needs some time to herself! For girl talk and makeup and monster hunting!

In the culmination of several attempts over two days to escape Scott and his friends (because he only has two friends apparently), Buffy locks herself and Cordelia in the school shrink's office. He's a nice guy.

"Do you girls want to talk to me about something?" he asks, raising his eyebrows.

"No," says Cordelia. "We're just hiding from her boyfriend." The guidance counselor's eyebrows go up a bit further, and Cordelia elaborates. "He won't leave her alone."

"Just need a little breathing room," Buffy insists. "He's clingy, not evil." The shrink nods and sort of gestures to the chair in front of him. "I don't need a counseling session, I just need Scott to sort of get a hobby, you know? I mean, I have a hobbies! I have a life outside my relationships."

"That's good," says the shrink. "It's important to have things that are our own."

"Yeah," says Buffy. "I mean, I can do…hobbies with friends, and I can do other hobbies with Scott, and it's not a big deal to not do everything with him all the time, and it's not like I have to be with the same people all the time, right?"

"Why would you even want to?" asks Cordelia, all serious-like, and the shrink opens his mouth to answer but suddenly the door slams open behind them.

"Pete, isn't it?" says the shrink pleasantly, and oh god it's one of Scott's two friends, someone save her.

"Hello?" says Cordelia, "Can't you see we're having a very important counseling session?"

"Like I give a damn," says Pete, and he closes the door behind him. Buffy stands up with half an idea to punch him and half an idea to give him a stern talking-to Giles-style, but Cordelia keeps talking about clinginess and the vein working in Pete's forehead suddenly is a lot more veiny than average and oh, well actually Faith's description of this thing was pretty damn accurate.

"Let me guess, anger issues," Buffy deadpans (and that was terrible, but it's not like Cordelia has a good sense of humor either) and then the Pete-beast launches itself over the desk at the poor shrink, who has been watching their exchange with a mixture of worry, confusion, and a sort of academic curiosity.

She tackles the Pete-beast as hard as she can (into a wall) and learns that the other part of Faith's description of the thing is accurate—it's pretty not-damage-able (unlike the wall). She thinks of Giles and jams her fingers in its eyeballs. It's gross, but generally successful because the Pete-beast goes reeling. The shrink goes for his phone.

"Call Giles!" Buffy orders at the same time as Cordelia yells:

"Call the principal!"

She chokes the Pete-beast unconscious with (great difficulty, geez, and also) Cordelia's silk scarf and is sort of standing over his limp body when Principal Wood walks in. He takes in the destruction in the office, Cordelia shielding herself and the guidance counselor with a broken chair, and the fact that the Pete-beast is rapidly turning back to being just Pete.

"Goddamn it," he mutters. "Stephen, I'm really sorry you had to see that." The shrink takes a deep breath, straightens his shirt, and grimaces.

"Is there something I need to know about the local gang activity?" he asks dryly, and Principal Wood sort of chuckles.

"Only if you're staying on," he says. "In the mean time, let's see if there isn't a cure for…whatever that is, shall we?"

"Giles has a tranq gun," Buffy supplies.

"The librarian?" the shrink asks, then clearly decides not to question this latest development. "Well, that sounds useful."

—

Scott breaks up with her for not being emotionally available enough (and also for getting his best friend sent to murder serum detox prison), and tells half the school that she's banging Faith. Faith thinks it's hilarious. Faith has a nudity in front of a bus full of nuns sense of humor.

"I'm not gay," she tells Willow, exasperated, as they walk to the latest Scooby meeting. "And if I were, I wouldn't be dating Faith." Willow nods encouragingly.

"It's important to have, have discerning tastes," she says.

"Exactly," Buffy agrees. "If I dated a girl I'd date a nice, normal one. No Slayage, no monsters–"

"No cute vampires?" Willow asks, trying to wiggle her eyebrows.

"Angel's enough cute vampires," she says firmly. "No vampires, no magic, no nothing. Just normal."

"Well, I don't 'Buffy's gay for someone really boring' would make a good rumor," says Willow. "Go big or go home, you know?"

"Ugh. Maybe I'll just go home."

"No, don't say that!" Willow pleads. "Come on, we just need to stage a big breakup for you and Faith and then you'll be single again right in time for Homecoming!" Oh god, Homecoming. How'd she forgotten about Homecoming?

"Publicly breaking up with Faith only solves part of my problem, Will," she says wearily, pushing open the library door.

"Wait, you're dating Faith?" Xander asks, because of course he's right there. Faith puts an arm around Buffy's waist, because she's also right there.

"Haven't you heard?" she drawls.

"Yeah, but you're breaking up," says Willow, trying in vain to pry Faith's arm away. "You're not her type!"

"Willow–"

"Leather and asskicking is everyone's type, Red," says Faith. "Face it, B, we're soulmates or something."

"In your dreams!" snaps Willow. Xander elbows Jesse and mutters something about dreams, and Buffy rolls her eyes.

"Willow!" Willow stops.

"What?"

"Please stop breaking up with my fake girlfriend for me." And that's a sentence for the yearbook right there. "Giles, please give me something to stake tonight. Please."

(Bless Giles for coming through with a map of new vampire nests. She and Faith split up to deal with them and make it home by midnight.)

—

The day they take yearbook pictures, everything goes wrong in creative ways and Buffy's covered in demon goo and dirt. Cordelia hands her a spare shirt from her locker and a flyer demanding her vote for Homecoming Queen.

"Try not to look awful," she says, grimacing at the state of Buffy's hair.

(Buffy takes the picture in Cordelia's shirt and Faith's jacket and a bunch of hair-related glamours from Willow, and thinks she could look worse. It could be worse. She'll be in the stupid yearbook, at least.)

—

She wants to run for Homecoming Queen, but she's a good few weeks late to the party now. Also most of the school definitely thinks she's some sort of delinquent, though at least the Faith rumors have simmered down.

"It's an archaic institution!" says Willow. "Let's usurp the Homecoming Court!"

"Vive la revolution," says Oz. She considers it, but it's the sort of archaic institution she sort of likes, so when Faith suggests they go together she says fine, sure, whatever, they'll probably be called away to stab something halfway through anyway.

It turns out she's wrong, though. The unscheduled stabbing doesn't happen halfway through Homecoming, it happens right after she and Faith and their stupid limo are kidnapped by Kakistos's stupid escaped lieutenant and they have to flee through the woods in heels and long dresses.

(Destiny won't let her have nice things, but it's a clear night and she can chart their path by the stars over Sunnydale, and weird overly sexual jokes aside Faith really does have her back. Slayerfest '98 won't know what hit it.)

—

She and Faith argue over sparing the first assassin, but he's human and he's moderately repentant and he leaves when they let him go. Two others blow up a fourth assassin, which is sort of nice of them even though they were aiming for the Slayers, and Buffy and Faith make it to school in record time. Only there's vampires in the library again. (And no Giles again—is he "chaperoning" with Ms. Calendar?)

"Seriously? Cowboy?" says Faith, exasperated. The vampire girl snaps something about insulting her man and bares her fangs, and holy shit she's actually wearing a tacky engagement ring. Buffy pauses, makeshift stake raised.

"Wait, can vampires even get married?" she asks.

"Of course we can!" the vampire girl snaps. "We love each other." Cowboy vampire nods seriously.

"Ain't nothing gonna stop us," he says. "Specially not in Vegas."

"Huh," says Faith. "Cool. We're gonna stake you now, but good to know."

Vampires don't have souls, so they can't love, she thinks. You need a soul to truly love someone. Giles says that, Angel says that, everyone knows that. But she thinks of Spike and Drusilla and the looks at the vampire girl giggling on her husband's arm and thinks someone's maybe gotten their lines crossed somewhere along the way. She smiles grimly.

"Congrats. It's a nice ring," she lies, and lunges at the vampire girl as she drops her gaze to it. Cowboy vamp gets in the way, tries to knock her aside, and she stakes him instead while Faith takes out the girl.

"C'mon, B, let's roll," says Faith, fishing the ring out of the dust. It's really super tacky, but Buffy's got vamp dust in her eye. "B? What–" And then someone fires a machine gun through the library door and she stops worrying about the logistics of getting married without a soul and dives for cover.

—

So their corsages have tracking devices, but also the guys tracking them are being tracked by commandos and it's all a great big machine gun mess.

"Terrorists," says a masked commando guy who looks suspiciously like the ones who called Buffy an estee.

"But why were they shooting at us?" Buffy asks in her most wide-eyed blonde in a Homecoming dress voice.

"Because they're terrorists," says commando guy. Then he sighs and pulls off his mask thing. Underneath it, he doesn't look much older than her. "Look, you kill a pretty blonde at a school dance? That makes people freak the hell out, and freaking out is what people like that want from us."

"They were tracking us," Buffy tells him. "Me and my sister." Faith rolls with that just as much as she rolled with the girlfriend thing, and whatever they don't look that different. Commando looks over the two of them and sighs.

"Any idea how you got their attention?" he asks.

"We're out a lot at night," says Faith. "Maybe it makes us look easy."

"Easy targets," Buffy corrects automatically, and the commando nods.

"You graveyard girl?" he asks, and Buffy doesn't have to fake the wince. Yep, same weird military things.

"I like the ambience?" He snorts. "Hey, actually?" She may as well ask, right?

"Yes?"

"What's an estee?" Commando's face goes carefully blank.

"You ran into a bunch of our guys on a training exercise. Thought you were part of a trap—it's a Set Trap. ST." And that's bullshit. She knows it, and she's pretty sure commando knows she knows it. "Nothing to worry about," he adds, and personally escorts the two of them to the dance while pointedly ignoring Faith's attempts to get his number and first name. (His last name is Gates, according to a little name patch on his uniform.)

They show up in time to see Cordelia crowned Homecoming Queen. They also show up right on time to see her have a screaming match with and refuse to dance with the Homecoming King, which somehow ends with her and Buffy waltzing under the sparkly lights.

"This is a disaster," says Cordelia. "And where've you been?"

"There were assassins," Buffy tells her. "Also terrorists, I guess."

"How dare they! And Danny cheated on Harmony!"

"Men, you know," says Buffy, who has mud on her dress and no corsage and is not sure this counts as a high school moment to remember even though someone's taking pictures and the Homecoming King is getting his ass handed to him by Harmony off to the side.

"You think you find a good one, and then boom, he's a cheating scumbag or a vampire or about to move to Nevada!" And then Cordelia breaks down crying and Buffy sort of steers her to the nearest place to sit.

(There'll be a photo in the yearbook of Cordelia with her updo coming apart and her crown on crooked and Buffy with her dress torn and stained and leaves in her hair, dancing across an empty floor and looking, both, like conquering heroines.)

—

(Buffy's not at UC Sunnydale yet, so there's no way for her to see the commandos reporting in or to see Gates getting chewed out for going after human targets.

"I'd double-check that, ma'am," he says firmly. "Take a look at this." And he sets the videocasette labeled Slayerfest '98 on the table in front of him.

"Looks cheesy," supplies a blond soldier standing beside him. Gates's lip twitches.

"And our terrorists have an interesting story to tell to go with it," he adds. "Professor Walsh, ma'am. I promise this is relevant to our interests." He's not wrong.)

—

(Buffy also hasn't stormed City Hall yet for any reason, so she has no reason to think that it contains anything other than bureaucrats and a mayor who keeps getting reelected. This time, though, it contains a rather savvy vampire who has recently acquired a new job. Mayor Wilkins has tasked him with providing a town-wide distraction, and he knows just the man to supply that — and with flair.

"Government work, Trick? How the mighty fall," Ethan Rayne teases, and Trick rolls his eyes.

"Think I'm moving up in the world, actually," he says. "Hellmouths, Slayers—this is way more fun than Kakistos let us have. This guy's the laissez-faire type."

"Careful, mate," Ethan says. "You'll date yourself."

"Trickle-down evil?" Trick suggests. "Though I always figured chaos was a grassroots sort of thing."

"You know me, Trick, I've always been a man of the people," says Ethan. "They get what they want, you get what you want, and everyone's happy. And you and I drink on the municipal dime, I suppose."

"That's the plan," says Trick, handing over a suitcase full of cash that had been meant to be part of the Slayerfest payout. "And here's half your municipal dime in advance, just in case you were considering trickling off elsewhere." Ethan's pleasant smile widens as he flips through the bills.

"And now, laissez-moi faire ce que j'aime mieux, mon cher," he says. "Pour eux, ça ne sera qu'un jolie rêve.")


	13. 1998, One Day Before the SATs (1)

It's partway through October and Giles is getting all kinds of twitchy, to the point that he's insisting on coming with her on patrol. With his SAT Prep book. Not that she doesn't appreciate him taking an interest in the not-Slayer-y bits of her life, but Buffy's only just coming to terms with the fact that she might actually survive to college. Couldn't she wait like a month before worrying about getting in? (Not in Giles-land. Giles went to Oxford. Giles has strong feelings about education.)

"'B'. I'm going with 'B'. We haven't had 'B' in forever." Buffy scribbles in the little bubble.

As Giles goes all Giles-like, crapping on a perfectly acceptable multiple choice method, she sees a new vamp start creeping up behind them. And really, staking is a far better use of her only #2 pencil than filling out stupid bubble sheets.

(She dreams about the SATs coming alive and attacking her, which at least means there's no butterflies. It's still a nightmare like few others.)

—

Principal Wood is standing in the school hallway, flagging down students at random and handing them boxes of chocolate bars. It's enough to make Buffy pause, so of course he makes direct eye contact with her and shoves two (two!) boxes into her arms and clinks a clipboard down on top of them.

"For the band," he says firmly. "Sign this, please."

"I'm not in the band," Buffy says, and Principal Wood sighs.

"Yes, I'm aware," he says, in a tone that suggests he has said the same thing at least six times already. "But the school has just gotten its yearly funding cut, and I have enough Cocoa-riffic candy bars to feed a small army due to some sort of clerical error, so we will all do our parts make up this deficit. Sign this, please."

She signs.

By lunch, she's pretty sure the whole school is carrying around boxes of candy. Looks like he really hadn't been kidding about that clerical error.

"I think it's enough candy to feed the town," says Jesse dubiously. "For like, more than a day. Three square meals."

"Rectangular meals," says Xander, chewing on one of the chocolate bars, and Buffy snorts.

"I wonder if the vampires would buy them," says Chuxi. "Do vampires have money?"

"Well they–" Willow starts, then frowns. "I guess they don't need to buy food, do they?" Marcie pokes at her salad.

"Presuming you sold three chocolate bars each to four vampires, and the chocolate bars cost $5 apiece, calculate the likelihood of getting eaten for dessert," she mutters. God, Giles is in her head.

"I feel like the chocolate would be the dessert, though," Xander says. "Or is it a thing of evil to eat your dessert for not dessert because sign me up."

"I don't think it really matters what order they eat you in," says Willow. "You're still dead with a side of band candy."

—

Her mother, for all her talk of being more involved with the school spirit is way less enthusiastic about buying all her chocolate bars than she should be. Really, adults are all talk and no action. Especially her mom–her mom still won't even let her drive! Which is so unfair! She's seen the videos of all the accidents (like demons aren't grosser?) and only flunked the written once. She's the Slayer! Battling the forces of darkness and keeping the city safe. That should at least be worth a learner's permit.

"Buffy, what would I do with forty chocolate bars?" her mother asks. The better question is what Buffy is supposed to do with forty chocolate bars if her mom won't buy them and vampires probably won't either.

"You could hand them out at the gallery," she suggests. "'Buy something Pre-Columbian, get a free cavity.'"

Her mother concedes to twenty chocolate bars, which is probably enough. Maybe she can foist the rest off on Giles, as punishment for torturing her with literary passages when she could be punching the forces of darkness in the face. And driving. Maybe if she does sell the candy off Principal Wood will vouch for the value of cars as Slaying equipment. It doesn't even have to be European.

—

Giles pays for his crime of SAT-prepping by taking a weighted ball to the face in training and buying the rest of her chocolate bars. Ha! That's a win. Plus it makes Ms. Calendar laugh while she works on Giles's computer in his office. Then Buffy pleads mom-orders even though she told her mom she'd be training late with Giles and meets Faith behind the school grounds. Well, it's sort of maybe technically patrolling, since they're both Slayers and they're both out, right? Right.

What they're actually doing is following a tip Faith heard at the Wicca club, something about a sorcerer lurking around downtown. An invisible sorcerer with an invisible house. Faith thinks it's the dumbest cover-up ever and that Amy has a secret boyfriend, but Willow's said that she wants to see what it's all about at least four times, so they're trying to investigate. Trying. If the guy's really there somewhere, he really is invisible. She walks Faith to Ms. Calendar's place and makes it home entirely too late and entirely empty-handed.

But empty-handed is still better than coming home to her mother and Giles glaring at her like she decided to run away and join a traveling circus. It's not a pleasant conversation. Yes, she lied to her mother. Yes, she lied to Giles. Yes, she lied to Willow too. No, she wasn't out with another vampire boy, mom, Angel is in Borneo and she's not going to smooch any other vampires thank you. No, Giles, she wasn't skiving off her Grand Destined Duties, she and Faith were out…

"Training," she says firmly. "So that we can work together better, since she's here and everything."

"You're going behind our backs...to train?" says Giles. He almost sounds disappointed there.

"Well, I can't do SAT prep when Faith's with me–and she doesn't need to study!" That prompts another minor fit from her mom, who tries to say that Faith is a bad influence, and of course Buffy jumps to her defense partly because she likes having another Slayer around and partly because she really is tired of being over-scheduled. Giles jumps in there too because it's his girlfriend's couch Faith is sleeping on.

"Alright, alright, let's not freak out," Giles says. "Faith is– Jenny thinks Faith is perfectly responsible, and I have to trust her judgement on the matter." That would sound a lot better if he didn't have half a chocolate bar sticking out of his pocket. "But Buffy, there's no need to be so– so rash about these things. Just tell someone when the two of you run off to break windows or something." He pauses, and takes his glasses off because Buffy is pretty sure she's making a really stupendously confused face. (Since when does Giles say 'freak out' and talk calmly about breaking windows?)

"It's too late at night for this," her mother snaps. "I'm tired. You're tired. We're all tired. Go to bed."

"Yes, you, uh, you need to be well-rested," Giles says. "For school and such."

Hell with it. She goes to bed and hopes they'll get over it by morning.

—

Short version? They don't get over it by morning. Her mom is still home and all sulky. Giles is missing in action by morning, and Faith crashes study hall to tell everyone that Ms. Calendar's gone too and wasn't in the apartment when she woke up, and Buffy's already freaking out for real when Principal Wood sticks his head into the classroom and tells them they can all go home, because he doesn't have time for this.

"Where's Giles?" she asks him, and Principal Wood looks baffled for a moment.

"Oh, your Watcher. I don't know. He called in sick."

Giles doesn't call in sick. Giles doesn't do sick period. She's not even sure the guy's capable of being sick. (She thinks of Eyghon and her heart lodges in her throat. That's the last time Giles was missing. She has to find him.)

Since she's an optimist, or really in denial, she goes to his house before the hospital. Listening at the door, Buffy can hear people moving around in the apartment. That's something-that's at least a suggestion that someone's not in a coma in there. (Eyghon could walk and talk in someone else's body though.) She grits her teeth and tries the door, which is… unlocked? She fights the urge to kick it down and opens it sharply.

"Giles-" she blurts, then stops on the threshold. Giles is standing there and blinking at her. He looks fine, if a bit ruffled. Not wearing a jacket, sure, but he's at home and that's fine. He looks fine. He even looks sober. "Giles, you're okay!"

"Of course I am," he says. "What are… Is something wrong?"

"You were missing!" That sounds dumb out loud. "And so's Ms. Calendar and the principal sent us home." Giles shrugs. Shrugs?

"I called in," he says airily. "Did you know, Buffy, that I haven't taken a proper day off since I came to Sunnydale?" He runs his hand through his hair. "Not one! It doesn't have to be the end of the world again for me to not bloody babysit a library that no one, besides you lot, goes into anyway. Not to mention that you're haring off doing what-have-you on your own!"

"Yeah well…" Something is so many kinds of wrong, but she can't figure out what. More pressingly— "Ms. Calendar's missing too!"

"Jenny's fine," says Giles, at the same time as Ms. Calendar's voice comes from somewhere in the back of the apartment.

"What? And you were worried?"

"See?" says Giles, sounding a bit snippy. "She's here and she's not possessed and you don't have school so you can just run along and be a good little Slayer."

"Of course I was worried," she snaps. "You–"

And then Ms. Calendar walks into view, and wow Buffy's really reconsidering the not-possessed thing. She did not look like her usual self. For one she's wearing a lot of makeup. Like pale as a vampire, smoky eyes and black lipstick. And her clothes, usually Ms. Calendar is pretty okay with fashion but….ripped jeans, stiletto boots and a corset top? Ick. At least the leather jacket she recognizes.

"Hey Buffy." What. The. Hell. Giles looks like he's trying and failing not to grin.

"You're uh, you're both okay?" she asks dubiously (and that's an SAT word!). Are they on drugs? She feels like she's sort of failing at being a teenager because she doesn't know what drugs they'd be on. Would Willow know? Wait, no, Willow's seventeen and not sure what PCP actually is. Actually, would anyone in this town know what someone on PCP looked like? Anyway, the point is this isn't a Willow research question and she doesn't know whom she can actually ask.

"Of course we're both okay," says Giles. "Don't fuss, and go enjoy your day off." Ms. Calendar goes to stand next to him and nods. It's not as encouraging as she probably thinks it is though. The makeup definitely ruins it.

"But… the SATs," she says back for lack of anything else to say. Giles frowns.

"Right. Well, can't imagine you can learn anything more now, so don't fuss and go enjoy your day off." He pauses, and his expression softens. "You're a smart girl, Buffy. You'll do fine." Oh yeah, something is dead wrong.

—

Her mom's not home and there's a note bubblegummed to the fridge saying she's gone out, and Buffy's pretty sure she's slipped into Bizarro-world over here. So she does what any sensible person would do in Bizarro-world: She calls Willow and Xander and the whole crew and goes to the Bronze.

It's actually a good idea, investigating-wise, because the Bronze is full of old people partying. And, in context of Ms. Calendar's fashion disasters and Giles's entire… sort of personality transplant and the bubblegum on the fridge and the fact that school's out?

"They're acting like a bunch of..." says Willow, then she trails off, staring blankly up at the stage (where her family doctor and a few other people too old for karaoke are doing karaoke).

"They're acting like a bunch of us," says Buffy, who thinks she's never really been this teenage-y even at her most teenage-y but whatever and then her Slayer brain catches up to...the rest of her brain and sort of grabs it by the shoulders and screams something incoherent about Giles summoning demons at that age. "And that's bad because Giles," she says out loud instead of screaming incoherently because she's not entirely an ancient warrior of gatey things thank you very much.

"But...you said Ms. Calendar was also there! Maybe…" Willow tries to supply helpfully. Buffy thinks about the black lipstick and stilettos and suddenly feels very very scared. Before she can say anything, though…

"Buffy?" She jerks herself out of what's rapidly becoming a spiral of demons-and-debauchery panic and turns, only to find herself nose-to-chest with Principal Wood. Who's back in his vampire hunting fitted-black-stuff and combat boots getup, only it's the middle of the day and she's pretty sure there's no vampires around. Because, you know. Middle of the day. Sunlight.

"Hi, you did tell us we could leave school," she says really fast. Principal Wood frowns.

"And you took the opportunity to go out dancing? You're a Slayer. Oughtn't you be…" Someone shrieks happily, and he sort of winces. "We're on a Hellmouth, it should be crawling with undead fiends."

"Well it's–" she starts, then pauses. He's got a point, actually. Daylight or not, the town is sort of wide open if all the grownups are being useless, and it's not like the Bronze has windows. There definitely should be vampires around. Wood folds his arms.

"No good excuses?" he asks archly. She holds up a finger.

"Shush." Not that she can't do it with distractions, really. Giles has her training so hard that she's pretty sure she can recognize a vampire a mile away while sleep deprived at a… a rave or something at this point. There's nothing undead in the Bronze. And that's weird.

"What?" Wood presses.

"No undead fiends in sight," she tells him, and even Willow frowns at that.

"What do you mean?" Wood probably means it snappishly, but it comes out more wide-eyed confusion. "It should be open season with how people are behaving!"

"But, but it's a good thing that it's not, right?" Willow says. "It means people won't get eaten!"

"By vampires," says Buffy. "They won't be eaten by vampires. But if the vamps aren't around…"

"Something bigger sent them running scared," says Wood, sounding appropriately doomy. Then his eyes sort of go big as the thought sinks in. Something bigger, but what? The last time the town had been clear of supernatural influence, there'd been evil lawyers, the armored woman bodysnatching Ms. Calendar, and the demon Acathla trying to wrest itself free from its tomb. If they're dealing with something that level of apocalypse…

"Something evil happening?" Oz's band must've finished its set, because he's off the stage and looks mildly concerned.

"Scary-evil," says Willow, nodding. "We've… we're… there's Hellmouth drugs."

"Oh," says Oz. "Makes sense." They're both looking at her now, because right, she's the leader. She's supposed to be in charge.

"Come on," she says. "Let's get out of here. We need to figure out what's causing this."

—

Wood won't let anyone else drive, because he "bought this car with his own money and is gonna crash it himself, so there." Buffy wants to tear out her hair, not in the least because while Principal Wood normally obeys traffic laws (Spike hunts aside), right now he's on at least one kind of Hellmouthy drugs and and guns it at (Buffy checks) 85 miles per hour down a residential street in Sunnydale and she may have failed the written test twice but even she's not that bad. Probably. She'd not be that bad if she tried to drive. That's what she means.

Anyway, Wood tears up main street while Willow begs him to slow down and Oz sort of silently holds on to the car door while looking nauseous.

"Traffic laws, you know?" Willow is saying a bit hysterically when Wood takes his attention off the road entirely to tell her exactly what traffic laws can do to him, and Buffy sort of sees a jeep coming around the corner in slo-mo Slayer battle vision, only she can't stake it so she just sort of screams. (And then Willow screams and Oz goes silently wide-eyed and Wood twists the steering wheel a moment too late.)

They crash. It's not too bad, it's not major, the most major bit is that Willow's hyperventillating and having a gigglefit at the same time and the left side of Wood's car looks like it's been sort of squashed, which it has.

"Well, no one's dead," says Wood, even though his hands are shaking so bad he's dropped his stupid crossbow twice. (At least it's dark out now. He's got an excuse for the anti-vamp arsenal now.) Buffy rolls her eyes.

"Yeah well, no thanks to you," she mutters.

"Like you have a driver's license!" snaps Wood, and then he fishes a stupid chocolate bar out of his anti-vamp kit and eats it grumpily. Oh, this is gonna be a long night.

She leans against the car, pressing her forehead to cool metal, and tries to think this through. A spell? She's never seen a spell that could affect so many people, but she's hardly an expert. Giles would know, or Ms. Calendar, only they're both… well, they're both affected. They can't help. (They need help.) No, she's more or less on her own for this one.

"Willow, Oz." She has to raise her voice a bit to cut through Willow's high-pitched freaking out, but it works. "Go to the library, call-anyone you think can help. Try to find out what sort of spell this is. Me and Rambo over here are going to take field duty."

"Rambo," Wood scoffs, but he's sort of grinning and doesn't argue the point. "Yeah, sure, Slayer. Let's go kick something's ass!" And then he fumbles his crossbow so bad it comes apart. (Good work, Rambo.)

But she's barely sent Willow and Oz off when she hears another familiar voice, one she doesn't really want to hear in the middle of a dark street on a Hellmouth even if there's mysteriously few vampires around.

"I think you're just messing with me," says her mom, her tone girlish and light. "You just want all the candy to yourself! It's sure better than… than whatever this stuff is." Buffy can't hear the response, but her mom laughs aloud and screw it, she tries (and fails) to ditch Wood and his stupid chocolate bar and goes to investigate. Or rescue. It's probably rescue.

"Mom?" she calls. There she is, leaning against a tree and waving an (unopened) bar of chocolate at a man who's offering her something that's definitely not a normal cigarette.

"Buffy! There you are!" Her mom's all smiles, even though her hair is flooffed to an extreme and she's wearing some sort of floaty dress that's a bit transparent and really not mom-style. The guy with her looks like he's been dragged backwards through a mud puddle.

"There I am?" Buffy yelps. "I don't think it's me that's the problem right now-I came home and you were just up and gone and now there's bubblegum on the fridge and everyone-all the adults are acting super weird, mom, and it's after dark and you know that's dangerous around here!" Her mom blinks at her, wide-eyed startledness and confusion.

"I'm fine," she says finally. "Look-it's not a big deal, and the fridge is ugly anyway, and oh, Buffy, don't look at me like that, have some chocolate and relax!" And she holds out the stupid chocolate bar and Buffy's seen so many of them in the past three hours she never wants to see one again and actually all the adults acting weird had been eating them and she realizes that's probably both correlation and causation (more SAT terms!) at the same time that her mom's new friends snags the chocolate bar out of her hand and says:

"Er, no, don't do that, we need a-a sober Slayer, you see." And any bubblegum-related concerns are pushed clean out of Buffy's mind because her mom is not only off her face on magic chocolate in a park after dark on a Hellmouth with some guy who's definitely trying to trade her magic chocolate for weed, she's off her face on magic chocolate in a park after dark on a Hellmouth with creepy Ethan. (Who is definitely trying to trade magic chocolate for weed.)

"You!" she snaps, and Ethan winces and puts up his hands quickly in the universal gesture of innocence. Which would work a lot better if he was literally anyone else (and not still very much holding a joint. He seems to realize that last bit and sticks the thing in his pants pocket quickly.)

"D'ya know each other?" Buffy's mom asks happily. "Ethan was just telling me-did you know he's a sorcerer?"

"Yeah," says Buffy. "Did he happen to mention the chaos-y stuff?" (Which she really should've asked Giles to clarify at some point but oh well.)

"Chaos magic?" says Wood curiously. "I've never met an actual practitioner."

"See?" says Buffy's mom. "He's cool!"

"I-if you say so, blondie," says Ethan, liberating Wood of the rest of his candy bars. "Don't eat those. Bad, um, for your teeth."

Buffy's halfway through asking him how he'd know there was something wrong with the chocolates when she realizes exactly how, so what comes out of her mouth is:

"Yeah but how-wait-you! You put the whammy on my mom!" Ethan flinches back again.

"No I didn't!" he says quickly. "I mean, well. Not specifically-Trick said-it's um, well, listen, I was getting paid for this, so it's not-not really a bad thing." He offers her a twitchy grin. "Gotta say it's a nice piece of magic, though. Worked out all proper."

"Did it?" Buffy asks, trying to loom as much as she can when dealing with a guy who's got like a foot on her height-wise. Ethan's grin fades and he hugs his arms to his chest.

"Works great," he says stubbornly. "Hypocritical j-jackass of a sellout double-crossed me. So, um, me and blondie were gonna go find Ripper. And you. And help."

"And we found you!" Buffy's mom adds helpfully, then offers Wood a bright smile. "And the principal who also fights monsters because we live on a Hellmouth. So I think it's working out fine!"

Wood takes the next few minutes to awkwardly insist Buffy's mom call him Robin while Buffy's mom giggles at him and calls him charming and asks him to call her Joyce. Buffy sighs and snags one of Wood's crossbow bolts to threaten Ethan with.

"Talk," she orders. "Preferably loud, so I don't have to hear them."

"If I d-double-cross the people who've double-crossed me does it make it a qua-quadruple-cross or just two double-crosses?" Ethan asks.

"It makes you a bunch of evil creeps with no honor and me the superpowered chick holding a pointy thing at your threat," says Buffy. Ethan bites his lip and nods slightly.

"Point, um, taken," he mutters, then lays out what he knows of the Stupid Candy Disaster Plan.


	14. 1998, One Day Before the SATs (2)

_Author's Note: Hey, cool, people are actually reading this! Hi! I'm glad you're enjoying it. JayeMaru- I'm having so much fun making Buffy's narration sound all Buffy-like, you have no idea. WillTheWatcher- Yes, all the ramifications of the not-dead people being, er, not dead are starting to kick in little by little, aren't they? :D Stay tuned for more, because there's plenty more hopefully well-paced stuff to come..._

What Ethan knows about the Stupid Candy Disaster Plan isn't all that much, despite the fact that he's sort of an integral part of it. Apparently he's just some kind of chaos-flavored subcontractor in this case.

"Great idea, really," he says, "Um, until they left me for dead in the sewer and didn't pay me. Ergo, um, bugger Lurcornis and bugger the tribute."

"They tried to kill you?" Buffy's mom asks, wide-eyed. She's gotten over the whole evil part of the evil sorcerer thing really quick. "Why would they do that?"

"Because they're demons," says Wood flatly from the driver's seat. "They kill people, it's what they do."

"That's terrible!" says Buffy's mom, and Buffy fights the urge to bang her head against the dashboard.

"Hey, turn left here!" Ethan orders suddenly, leaning into the front of the car in the most awkward way possible. Wood takes a right angle, and Ethan nearly goes through the windshield for his troubles while Buffy's mom yelps with fear and Buffy finds herself reminding three grown adults that there are laws about seat belts. (Ethan mutters something about sticking it to the man, and she thinks, oh no, he's on the damn candy too.)

But the point is that they do find the distribution center (and did creepy Ethan have to pick the sketchiest warehouse ever for it? probably) and then they split up. Ethan's going to go in the back way, because Trick's mooks probably don't know he's been fired, while Buffy and Wood (and Buffy's mom, because where are they gonna leave her?) take the front and try to stop the distribution.

By the time they get around to one of the main doors there's a crowd of adults all jumping and yelling for candy. Buffy is pretty sure she recognizes the guy from the pharmacy, the mailman and that weird guy who hangs out at the butcher and never seems to be buying anything. Who knew "guy from the pharmacy" had that many tattoos?

Also she never wants to see adults making out again? (Setting aside that she's technically almost an adult. Old adults. Gross ones.) At least some of them are being fairly subtle, but the guy with the gun down the back of his jeans sucking his girlfriend's face front and center just needs to– oh god. Oh god oh god...

"Giles?!" Buffy yelps, because yes, that's definitely Giles, oh my god, and he needs to stop sucking Ms. Calendar's face like right now. Sooner than now! And keep his hands to himself while he was at it– hands aren't supposed to go there! "Stop that right now!"

"Go away. Busy." Giles mumbles as Ms. Calendar does...something to his neck and ear. (Not the one with an earring in it–and since when does Giles have his ear pierced?) His hands are sliding up her shirt and…

"No! You two stop it right now!" Buffy grabs Giles's arm and pulls him away from Ms. Calendar. Her black lipstick is all over his face and neck. Buffy can't decide if that's better or worse than her wearing it. (It must be the really cheap kind, because there's really more of it on Giles than on Ms. Calendar's mouth at this point.)

"What's your deal?!" Ms. Calendar scowls as she wraps her leather jacket tighter around herself. Buffy's deal is so many things at once that she just sort of gestures vaguely and makes an incoherent noise, while her mom giggles and says:

"Mr. Giles, you've got something on your neck." (Seriously. Her mom's a ditz.) Giles sort of scoffs and waves a hand.

"Joycie, love," he drawls. "First of, don't 'mister' me– we know each other, you can just call me Ripper." (Buffy remembers, in a slightly frightening flash, Giles breaking a chair on a possessed man's back - You want Ripper? I'll give you Ripper! - and thinks that no, she doesn't want even a little bit of Ripper thank you very much.)

"No she can't," says Wood waving his crossbow (that may function a bit like a security blanket, honestly). "Look at you! What kind of a Watcher are you? Ignoring your duty-"

"Oi! Shut up, would you? And put that thing down before you shoot yourself in the face. Duty my arse. Who're you to talk? You're not even a Watcher yourself!"

"Yeah? Well, you're-youre-" Wood flounders for a moment, then finds what's clearly a trump card to him. "I'm the principal!"

"Big man on bleedin' campus, aren't you?" Giles snaps, and someone starts chanting for them to fight.

"Stop this right now," says Buffy, feeling rather like she should be wearing something tweedy and elbow-patched for how much everyone's not listening to her. "Giles-Ms. Calendar- guys, come on! There's a spell on the damn candy and-"

"I want more candy," puts in Buffy's mom sullenly. "I think Ethan took my last bar…" At least that makes Giles take his hands out from Ms. Calendar's clothes, even though he says a string of words that includes some Buffy's never ever heard before in her life. Pretty sure they're all negative and deeply insulting though. She raises her voice.

"No more roofie chocolates from creepy Ethan for anyone, now is everyone paying attention to me?" Oh yeah, now they're paying attention to her. Including two guys in vamp-face who're standing at the warehouse door holding crates. Oh, hey.

There's a couple more vampires than that, but between her and Wood's only slightly shaky shooting and Giles happily whaling on them with a tire iron (really?) they're dusted pretty quick, and Buffy forcibly breaks up celebratory smoochies to shove her stand-in Scoobies into the warehouse. Ms. Calendar pouts.

"Why do they call you Ripper?" Buffy's mom asks, looking at Giles like he's the coolest thing in the world. Ew.

"'Cos he doesn't think he can be cool with a name like Rupert?" Ah yes, and now enter creepy Ethan. "Can't go anywhere without picking up a bloody fanclub, can you Ripper?"

"Ethan." Giles's voice has gone deadly quiet. "This your idea of a good time?" Buffy is suddenly very aware that he has a gun. (She's possibly more aware of the gun than Giles is, because Giles is looming with his fists clenched but making no move to like, arm himself.)

"N-not really," Ethan mumbles, tugging at his sleeves. "But, well, here we are. A little late to um, do, um, anything much. About it."

"All of you sit put," Buffy orders firmly. "I'm calling Willow." ("Tell her hi from me!" says Ethan. Ms. Calendar scowls.)

Willow, wonderful helpful Willow pinpoints Lucornis in one of Giles's books and tells her it eats babies. Which, uh, actually may be the grossest part of this whole mess but Buffy's not sure. Anyway, she sort of yells "Lucornis eats babies?!" really loud, and Giles and Wood stop arguing over weapons immediately and Wood tries to snatch the phone from her hand.

"Where is it? We have to stop it!" he insists. At least Wood's heart and/or priorities are in the right place, because Giles rounds on Ethan in a fury and actually does pull out the gun this time. Which, you know, admirable sentiment, but not the time or the place really.

"Giles, put the gun down," Buffy snaps. "You're not going to get anything out of him if he's dead."

"Don't think the baby-killing Chaos-freak needs his kneecaps," says Giles coldly.

"R-ripper, please," Ethan whimpers, wide-eyed and scared (for good reason, Buffy's pretty sure Giles knows how to shoot a gun pretty well). "I– I didn't– please– I s-swear I didn't–"

"Like hell you didn't know," says Giles. "Like. Hell." Ethan looks from him, to Buffy, to the gun, and bolts for the shelter of the nearest crate. Giles lunges after him, Buffy grabs the back of Giles's stupid t-shirt, and Ms. Calendar is suddenly there and pinning Ethan's arms behind his back.

"Trick said– he promised–!" (Petulant. That's an SAT word too. Ethan looks petulant.)

"Giles. Gun. Now." Giles hesitates, then hands the thing over, still visibly seething. Ms. Calendar has Ethan in something that's close to a headlock now. (For lack of anywhere else to put it Buffy shoves the gun down the back of her own pants and makes a mental note to make at least one bad joke about it at some point later.)

"Bloody insane– Janna, let– let me go already!" Ethan whines. (Ms. Calendar does not let him go even a little.) "Trick promised me it would be localized and, and bloody hell, Ripper, it's not like they're your babies!" And oh, that's the wrong thing to say. Now everyone is looking at him like they want to kill him.

"Gimme my gun back," says Giles.

"No."

"Fine, then you– Buffy, kick his ass."

"Giles, no." Because they need to make with the baby-saving, not the ass-kicking. Priorities.

"You're my Slayer and you're supposed to do what I tell you!" Giles yells. "And I'm telling you to– to break his fucking neck!"

"Seconded," Ms. Calendar says through gritted teeth. The angle she's at, she could conceivably do it herself.

"We have to go," says Buffy firmly. "Hospital. Babies. Demon. You can try to kill him later–or not, because he's technically helping us a bit." Giles says you can damn people with faint praise, but Ethan's clearly never heard the phrase because he looks pretty grateful.

"Right," says Wood. "The Slayer's right. We're going to kill Lucornis. No time for trash like that."

"He'll run off," says Giles darkly. "Bloody cowardly child-killer."

"I won't," Ethan answers. "I'll go with you. You can– you can dangle me in front of the demon if you like, I really, really didn't know it would happen like this."] Ms. Calendar rolls her eyes, but releases her hold on him. Ethan hurries a few steps away from her, straightening his fashion nightmare of a shirt. Honestly, did no one know how to dress back in the olden days?

"No one's dangling," says Buffy. "But I'm siccing Giles on you if you try anything." Giles grins like Christmas has come early.

—

They're too late to prevent a full-on kidnapping (babynapping?) at the hospital, but Giles's Watcher training kicks in at a good moment. It's kind of sad how proud of himself he looks. Almost as gross as the expression on Ms. Calendar's face when she looks at him. Goo-goo eyes times a billion.

"There's a lot of fucking sewers," say Ms. Calendar, and she's not wrong. There's an entire sewer system, though bits of it contain vampire nests and stuff. Buffy frowns.

"Maybe if we can get some sort of tracking spell? There's blankets and things still here, that should be enough for… uh…" For whatever it was that Willow did to track Drusilla. She turns to Ms. Calendar. "Ms. Calendar, do you know any spells like that?"

Ms. Calendar's face just darkens. "Fuck. You." she spits at Buffy who TOTALLY did not expect that "You're making fun of me. Ms. Calendar pulls her jacket tighter around herself and glowers.

"Don't make fun of her, yeah?" Giles blusters, getting physically between Buffy and Ms. Calendar. (Chivalrous, but pointless. She could throw him through a hospital wall if it came down to it.) For her part Ms. Calendar is looking really surprised. Ethan opens his mouth, shuts it, and raises his hand.

"What?" Wood snaps.

"You don't need a tracking spell," says Ethan. "I know where Lucornis's altar is." He offers a twitchy grin. "You know. Conveniently."

"Conveniently," Giles growls, and Ethan actually physically cowers. Buffy pokes Ethan in the shoulder hard enough to make him stumble.

"Less talking, more escorting." Ethan ducks his head quickly, then grabs her by the wrist and sort of pulls her along in the right direction.

Despite her fundamental misgivings about the whole situation, it turns out Ethan's actually not screwing with them. That's kind of a nice surprise. He leads them through the sewers until they come out behind a group of culty looking vampires. There's a raised platform (is that the altar?) with the a neat row of swaddled babies there. Trick is lurking away from the crowd with his hands behind his back.

"Those poor little babies, they must be so scared." Buffy's mom whispers, and Giles and Wood both move to make comforting gestures (Giles to put his arm around her, Wood for an awkward shoulder pat, god they're both losers).

"Let's kick Lucornis's ass," says Ms. Calendar, who would sound so much more impressive is she wasn't having a bit of trouble saying Lucornis's name. (And then she and Giles bicker for a solid minute there about whether or not she should stay back, but that's neither here nor there.) Buffy nods, grabs her stakes, and decides to take advantage of the element of surprise.

"Get the babies clear when you can," she instructs, then charges. Like, for real, there's four of them (and Ethan), someone will probably follow her instructions while she gets to stab.

What actually happens is that Giles charges in after her unarmed, Wood decides he's going to be backup and then realizes he's left half his anti-vamp kit in the hospital, Ms. Calendar hits a vampire on the head with a stake, Ethan makes a break for it, and Buffy's mom stops sniffling and actually goes to rescue the babies. (Good for her, Buffy thinks distantly. Gold star for mom. No gold star for Giles, who's getting his ass kicked in new and creative ways.)

Actually, she's pretty sure she spends more time saving Giles's neck (literally) than she does actually fighting vampires, and she's really no longer sure how he managed to survive to adulthood if this was what he really used to be like, and she's also fighting the urge to tell Ms. Calendar to remember to point the pointy end of the stake at the bad guys rather than at herself. At least her mom is more or less doing what she's supposed to, and Wood is proving halfway decent at distracting vampires so she can stake them. Close enough. If Lucornis doesn't show until he's called, then maybe…

"Trick!" Damn it. There's way too many drugged grownups to keep track of, so of course, of course Ethan has somehow managed to skirt the edge of the fight, reach Trick, and grab him by the sleeve. For a second (as she's pulling vamp number seven off of Giles) she thinks that Ethan's gonna get bit (and serves him right, if she didn't know better she'd throw Giles to the beasties too), but no–out of the corner of her eye she sees Trick actually stop mid-attack and stare at Ethan. (Baffled. Baffled's the word here.)

"Holy hell, Rayne," he says. "Still alive and kicking, huh?" Ethan whispers something in his ear, and Trick shakes his head. She misses whatever happens next because she throws a vampire mook (she's lost count, oops) over Giles and into the water, and then suddenly a gigantic slimy snakelike head emerges from the pipe and just eats it. It just eats the vampire. Buffy-the-Slayer processes that as "don't go in the water," but all the rest of her processes it as "holy shit, this thing eats vampires, is that allowed, also wow that's gross too." Everyone sort of takes a moment to consider this sudden turn of events (as well as the fact that Buffy's mom, Ms. Calendar, and Principal Wood have made it a decent way down the cleanest tunnel with the intended sacrifices).

"Huh," says Trick from his perch. Ethan's sort of clinging to him, staring at the pipe Lucornis came out of with unabashed horror. Then Trick sort of pats him on the head, detaches him, and smiles. "Y'know Rayne, all of a sudden you make a convincing point. Boys! Not our tribute, not our problem!" And then he just clears out. A few of the vampire mooks actually follow him.

"Come back and fight me!" yells Giles, who is bleeding from at least three different places and ignoring the fact that there's still like four mooks who've decided not to go with Trick.

"Are you people from England all insane!?" Ms. Calendar is gesturing to the hole that Lurconis came out of. She's right that is probably a lot scarier than four vampires.

"I really don't think it's England that's the problem," Ethan supplies unhelpfully. "Just him. Ripper's special and all. That's why they kicked him outta Watcher school." Because, y'know, Ethan's a paragon of all things sane and hasn't just been all huggy with a murderous vampire and Buffy knows she's really not in any position to question vampire snuggles but still, really?

"Giles? Go make him shut up," she says, instead of freaking out at both of them, and at least that gets Giles out of her way for long enough to get one, two, three-

Giles tackles vampire number four into the water, though to be fair the vamp had been going for Ms. Calendar. To be less fair, she had a stake, Giles is a Watcher, and the water summons Lucornis, and they know this already.

So she rescues Giles (again) and takes out Lucornis with a gas pipe and a torch Trick's mooks left behind, and then, finally, it's quiet. For a moment. Then all the babies start to cry at once.

"Can we go home now?" Buffy's mom asks, looking a bit tearful herself. "I want to go home now."

"Yeah," says Buffy. "Let's go home. I have the SATs tomorrow." Ms. Calendar is cooing to the sobbing stolen babies and they're all filthy and Buffy's pretty sure she's gonna fail the SATs or sleep right through them or something but she's got a Duty, doesn't she? There should be a special dispensation (Another SAT word!) for Slayers.

"Oh, just blow them off," says her mom. "I'll write you a note." Oh, that's so so tempting.

"No," she says with a weary sigh. "No, it's okay."

It takes a while but they get all the babies back to the hospital. Ms. Calendar is surprisingly good with kids.

—

The SATs are horrible. Buffy is sure she would rather go another round with Trick and his vampires before having to take a standardized test again. At least the vamps don't make her cross-multiply at all. Giles is pretty sympathetic about it, until he tells her that she can take them again. So she tells him about the massive hickey on his neck and he decides abruptly that he needs to go catalogue something.

Also Ms. Calendar comes to school with badly bleached streaks in her hair. (It's a mess, but the look on Ms. Calendar's face suggests she's absolutely daring anyone to question the new look. No one tries.) Faith tells Buffy very proudly that she did them herself. Faith also says that Ms. Calendar has her belly button pierced.

"Yeah, a little dangly spiral thingamabob. I bet Watcher-man thinks it's hot!" Faith half-yells in the otherwise silent library, because the girl really has a talent for making people uncomfortable. Giles goes pink and polishes his glasses on his scarf as Faith grins and puts her feet on the table. "Told ya, B!"

"I'm just gonna make a list," Buffy groans. "A list of things I found out that I never ever ever wanted to know!"

And of course, that's when creepy Ethan wanders in, carrying three cheap binders full of paper and a shirt that looks like something died in a vat of tie-dye.

"Are you still cross with me about the babies that didn't die?" creepy Ethan asks cheerfully.

"Yes," says Giles. He sounds more tired than angry, but it's by a narrow margin. "What's this?" Creepy Ethan shoves the binders into Giles's face and grins.

"Happy birthday, Ripper. Ever read the Books of Ascension?"

(It's not Giles's birthday.)


	15. 1998, Late Fall

Things almost return to normal for a while, aside from the part where Giles is obsessively wearing scarves to hide the hickey that won't go away and has to pretend to be a responsible adult librarian while looking like he recently tried to fistfight a vampire cult in a sewer while high on mind control chocolates. His nose will probably never look the same again Anyway, he puzzles over the Binders of Ascension for several days before gravely informing Buffy and Willow that all of the rituals described therein appear to be accurate.

"That's awful," says Buffy gravely. Usually that's the right tone to take around Giles. "What's it mean?" Giles sort of stares at her for a moment, thrown off guard, then launches into a properly Giles-y explanation of how a sorcerer who was powerful enough and evil enough could be able to use them to turn himself or herself into an Old One.

"Like, like a demon lord!" Willow interjects excitedly. "I know that one!"

"Who'd do something like that?" Buffy asks, because well, they sure did get those binders from a sketchy evil sorcerer. Giles takes his glasses off and gingerly pinches his nose, which, while still crooked, sure is a lot less purple than two days ago, good for him.

"Someone, er, I suppose someone who seeks ultimate power," he explains. "The Old Ones were… It would not be out of line to say that the Old Ones were functional gods. They had powers and abilities well beyond those of even the most powerful human magic-user—well beyond even our understanding. Were such a creature to attain full power…"

"Boom, end of the world?" Buffy guesses, because isn't it always? Giles frowns and shakes his head slowly.

"No," he says. "Not end of the world necessarily. Just end of our dominion over it. A return to the Primordium age. When demons and vampires ruled."

"Well," says Buffy. "That's not gonna happen."

"That's the spirit," says Giles, and he grins in a way that makes the slightly wrecked nose and healing black eye fit his face a little too well. "But, er, let's go about preventing this in a, er, reasonable way."

—

Buffy's still thinking about the Primordium age when she's out on patrol, mulling over demons and Old Ones and how a world can end without really ending, when she's jumped by three vamps at once. (Jerks!) She takes out two, and then sort of rotates awkwardly on the spot trying to locate the third one, only then he hits the ground in front of her with a stake in his back and dissolves into dust.

"Faith…?" she calls uncertainly, because Faith isn't supposed to be on this end of town tonight. Not a surprise: It's not Faith.

Yes very much a surprise.

It's Angel.

It's Angel who isn't in Borneo anymore and isn't a weird Slayer dream and is a completely corporeal and alive (well, sort of) Angel who is standing right in front of her looking sort of sheepish.

"Hi," he says, and she kisses him.

—

Angel's back. Angel's back! She's so happy she doesn't know what to do with herself and stays out with him until five in the morning and comes to school exhausted the next day, but it's worth it. It's worth it even though he shirks back from her kisses and wants to talk, because talking is good too. Everything, anything is good when Angel is around.

She should probably tell someone he's back, but she doesn't. It's nice to have a secret, some part of her life that is hers and hers alone. No Giles-lectures, no Mom worrying, no Willow bursting in with some bright new idea, no Faith to split things down the middle with…just hers. So she keeps him a secret and tries to schedule herself so that she can keep everything together, the school and the friends, the Mom, and the training and the patrolling and the research and the Angel.

"Are you sick?" Cordelia asks. "Because I don't want the flu, and you look flu-y."

"I'm fine," says Buffy, who's running on three hours of sleep and six cups of coffee and a lot of adrenaline. "Peachy. Five-by-five." Wait no that's Faith's thing. Should she be saying that? Well if she has to share her entire life with Faith then Faith can share her catchphrase.

"Don't cough on me," says Cordelia. "Or on Giles. He has apocalypse-brain." She frowns and twirls her hair. "I wonder if that's contagious too."

—

It almost works. It works for a little while, at least, but things start crashing down when the new Watcher comes to town.

Buffy and Faith are out hunting, running through a plan that's one-part Slayage and one-part cheer routine, acrobatic and synchronized. Or it's supposed to be. Faith is showing off and Buffy's so tired she's seeing double, but they make it work and it looked good on paper. Giles, when she'd outlined the new training plan, had smiled and said something about developing katas and that he'd look into different fighting styles that would suit both of them. She thinks that means he's proud of her, and that makes her feel all warm on the inside.

Gwendolyn Post, the new Watcher, calls it sloppy and improper. Buffy dislikes Gwendolyn Post (Mrs.!) on sight.

There's nothing actually wrong with Mrs. Post, though, nothing that she can put her finger on. Mrs. Post is a stuffy British Watcher like many before and after her, and she dresses primly and shakes her head about shenanigans and points out that Giles is letting Buffy have more freedom than she's supposed to, and none of that is actually incorrect. Faith seems to like her, at least, in a guarded sort of way, and Faith probably needs a Watcher even more than Buffy does. Faith doesn't have parents. Faith doesn't have a home. Faith sleeps on Ms. Calendar's pull-out couch and looks like a scared kid without her dark makeup. As much as Buffy likes her cheer-Slay-katas and as much as everyone pretends nothing's wrong, she knows Faith can't live like this forever. She thinks Giles and Ms. Calendar know this too, Buffy (and sometimes Faith, oops) have overheard them talking about it.

Hell, none of the can go on like this forever. Mrs. Post is lecturing Giles about what exactly the Watchers' Council thinks of him, Ms. Calendar is saying some not so nice things about the Watchers' Council and Mrs. Post, and Willow is trying to sneak out of the library with a textbook on Mesopotamian curses and Chuxi is arguing, again, with Xander, while Oz is face-down in a textbook, and Buffy can barely keep her eyes open and she thinks with absolute Slayer-dream clarity: none of us can go on like this forever. Something's going to break.

She's right.

Mrs. Post tells everyone that a demon called Lagos is looking for the glove of Myhnegon, then without batting an eye segues her monologue into criticizing Giles's Watchering abilities (again) and pointing out that Watchers aren't supposed to have relationships while in the field. Ms. Calendar doesn't take that well, because of course she doesn't, but Ms. Calendar hasn't quite managed to color over the bleached streaks in her hair and Mrs. Post points that out and Faith jumps to Ms. Calendar's hair's defense and Willow sort of jumps to Ms. Calendar's overall defense and then everyone makes with the yelling to such an extent that when it's all through Mrs. Post's bun's undone and Willow's sobbing so hard the glamours on her clothes are coming apart and Giles is burning a hole through his desk with his attempt at a living flame, and she's pretty sure Xander and Chuxi just broke up in the middle of that.

"I can see the level at which you operate here, Mr. Giles," Mrs. Post says coldly. "The Council was right to demand an investigation of your little enterprise. We will begin our hunt for Lagos tomorrow at sunset. Faith, with me."

"Fuck you," says Faith. "I'm not going anywhere." Mrs. Post opens her mouth, but then the fire alarm goes off and Giles stifles a yelp and jerks away from his desk.

"Language," says Mrs. Post. "Though that is really the least of our problems." And she turns on her heel and stalks out.

As soon as she's gone, Faith deflates and collapses onto a library chair. Buffy tries to join her, but the no-sleep catches up to her then and she falls forward and passes out instead.

Things sort of spiral down from there.

—

By the time the Lagos hunt begins in earnest the next afternoon, Buffy thinks Mrs. Post would almost be justified in telling the Watchers' Council that everything is a disaster. They're supposed to be researching Lagos, finding his weaknesses, but exactly none of that is happening. Instead, Chuxi is holed up on one side of the library with Cordelia, and Harmony(?!) and explaining loudly that Giles is going to get fired, Xander is going to get sold to the mob, and they're all doomed to die a fiery and Old One-ful death, Xander and Jesse are on the other side alternating between yelling that the girls aren't helping and making a big show of hitting the books, Marcie has somehow recruited Amy into doing a locator spell (on the floor in the middle of the library), Faith is trying to convince Ms. Calendar that they should fight Mrs. Post instead of Logos (a worthy goal, but still), Willow is just gone, and Oz is trying to help research but keeps getting yelled at by multiple parties.

"Buffy, there you are," says Giles, who looks about to blow a gasket. It's two hours until sundown, but maybe Angel's awake, maybe Angel can help–

"I have to go," she blurts, and flees. The relief she feels upon exiting the library hits harder than any vamp that year.

—

So, funny thing about having a sorta-boyfriend who is almost 200 years old? He definitely knows things. Angel's momentarily all vamp-faced and confused when he wakes up, but quickly pulls himself together.

"Lagos?" he asks.

"Yeah, some kind of demon looking for an all-powerful thingamabob…" She frowns. "What'd she call it, the Glove of Moon-gone?"

"Lagos wants the Glove of Myhnegon?" Angel asks, and wow gold star for saying that right.

"Yeah, that's the thing. New Watcher won't tell us what it does, but that's what he's looking for."

"Huh…" Angel frowns. "That's… I may know where it is."

"My guess? In one of those big old crypts around here," Buffy answers. "Me and Faith—new Slayer, long story—we're going investigating tonight, gonna see if we can't catch Lagos in the breaking-in. With Giles and Mrs. Post, I guess." Angel looks adorably pensive.

"Maybe you could start on the west side of town," Angel says. "I'm going to see if I can beat Lagos to this glove."

And he does, while Faith and Buffy patrol empty cemeteries and listen to Mrs. Post point out everything that anyone in Sunnydale has ever done wrong. No sign of Lagos, of course. Giles seems like he's taking it all in stride, but when a (really stupid) vamp comes out of nowhere he jumps into the fray personally. Faith almost trips over him and has to jump out of the way, while Buffy, well, she's the one who spent an evening yanking Ripper out of harm's way, isn't she?

"Giles, stake!" she yells, in the pass-me-one sort of sense, but Giles smiles grimly and puts a stake through the vamp. At least he's better at fighting when off the roofie chocolates.

"Good hit, Watcher-man!" Faith yells, while Mrs. Post looks primly disapproving.

"I had been meaning to ask how you had… injured yourself," she says, "but if this is how you respond to stress, then I suppose I oughtn't bother."

"It wasn't–" Giles starts, then sort of visibly thinks through the rest of a 'it's wasn't my fault, my creepy old friend roofied the whole town including me to steal some babies so I tried to fight five vampires at once while high'-type explanation and decides not to go with that. "I can handle myself in a fight, Mrs. Post," he says instead.

"Yeah," says Buffy. "Giles is pretty kickass."

"Thank you," says Giles, trying and failing to subtly retie his scarf.

"Is there a single regulation you aren't flouting, Mr. Giles?" Mrs. Post asks wearily. "You have barely train the Slayer you were assigned to, put yourself on the front lines, dabble in the dark arts, let civilians participate in and as far as I can tell actively sabotage our efforts to protect this world, and in addition to all of that I hear Faith is staying with your lover…"

"Hey, how many apocalypses have you stopped?" Buffy asks sharply, because Giles has clearly used up his badassery for the day and Faith is actually looking sheepish. Mrs. Post stares at her levelly.

"That only matters if you continue to stop them," she says. "No matter how impressive your record, you only have to fail once to die. Arrogance won't save you—or your friends."

She hates that Mrs. Post has a point. (Though, really, if anyone's the arrogant one there…)

—

The next day she interrupts Giles and Ms. Calendar's morning flirting-and-coffee/tea thing to tell them she knows where the Glove of Moonygone is.

"Yes?" says Giles. "Where is it?" Uh.

"Safe where Lagos can't get it, promise," Buffy says quickly, and Giles and Ms. Calendar make doubt-faces at her at the same time. "It's uh, a secret, because I don't… Because Mrs. Post." The doubt-faces intensify.

"Buffy, if something's the matter," Giles begins, but Ms. Calendar cuts him off.

"Oh, leave it, England. They're all having a bad time." That's… really true too. "Guess she's not leaving, though, our Mrs. Post."

"I don't think the town's big enough for two Watchers," Buffy answers, and Giles folds his arms uncomfortably.

"You'd think the Council would have at least sent word," he mutters.

"Wait," says Ms. Calendar. "Didn't they?"

"Er, no," Giles admits. "But it has been a long time since I was one of their favored sons."

—

Cordelia sees Buffy with Angel, and being Cordelia brings it up loudly and in public, and that's how Faith finds out details about the whole vampire boyfriend thing. Xander throws an absolute fit over it.

"That's great, though!" Willow says. "He's here and he's helping and that's really great! I–I really mean it!" At least Willow's on her side. Willow who's been missing in action for like two days now and is back in glitter.

"So now we kick Lagos's ass?" says Faith hopefully. "You, me, Watcher-man, Mrs. Post, the vamp boyfriend… some combo there?"

"Yeah," Buffy tells her. "Now we kick Lagos's ass."

—

So they kick Lagos's ass, only without any Watchers on board for the ride because Giles is nowhere to be found and Buffy would really rather go on a road trip with Spike and Drusilla than involve Mrs. Post in this.

But when Buffy and Faith bring the demon's head back to the school (Faith says Giles can put it on his wall, what the hell was Faith's last Watcher's interior decorating scheme) there's still no Giles, just a Ms. Calendar.

"We brought a Lagos head!" Buffy declares, waving the thing at her.

"Oh hey," says Ms. Calendar. "Rupert can put it on his trophy wall." Faith grins hugely. "If that woman doesn't get to it first, at least. Are you sure the glove is safe?"

"Yeah, yeah," says Faith. "Buffy's vampire boyfriend's got it in his mansion!" Buffy winces, and Ms. Calendar sort of stares at the two of them for a long moment then puts her face in her hands and says:

"Oh for the love of god…"

—

So Ms. Calendar calls Giles, who's at the university for some reason, and the whole story comes out, including that Giles has figured out a way create a living flame to destroy the glove and is on his way back to the school—well, to Angel's place—to do just that. One problem though: Mrs. Post apparently overheard that whole conversation, so by the time Buffy actually gets to Angel's with the spell ingredients and the master plan and the warning that Giles is on his way Mrs. Post is already there.

Buffy opens the door in time to see Mrs. Post come at Angel with a broken shovel, which is totally uncool. She says Angel was trying to use the glove himself, Angel says he's trying to make a living flame too.

"Where's the glove?" Faith snaps.

"I've got this under control!" Angel answers, but he's got an easy-to-read face when he's not all vamped out and he glances sideways at a locked box when he says it. Both Faith and Mrs. Post go for the box, and the whole thing dissolves into a four-way brawl that ends when Faith breaks open the box, Mrs. Post lunges for the glove with every obvious intention of putting it on, and Buffy freaks, picks her up, and chucks her at the wall. Mrs. Post hits the stone hard and sinks down.

"What did you do?!" Faith yelps half-hysterically.

"She was trying to get the glove!'"

"She's a Watcher!" Like that means something. Like that means anything.

"No she bloody well isn't," says Giles from the doorway, with a bag of magic stuff slung over his shoulder and a sheaf of papers in his hand. "Gwendolyn Post, removed from the Watcher's Council April 14, 1996, for abuse of dark magic. Last documented May 3, 1996." He grins at her unconscious body ( _I'll give you Ripper!_ ) and adds: "Approach with caution."


	16. 1998, Winter (1)

Everyone has their own opinions on Angel being back and won't shut up about them. Xander thinks it's terrible and is trying to keep her and Angel apart. But can Xander really be trusted when he's still listening to country music because Chuxi dumped him? Chuxi won't talk to any of them anymore, she's gone and joined Cordelia's crowd, and Cordelia is doing the thing where she pretends she's not friends with Buffy and her friends and has never been in the library in her life. Willow, who has stopped sneaking around and now is pretty much attached to Oz's lap, says it's great so many times that Buffy isn't even sure she should believe her. And of course, Buffy's mom wants to invite Angel for dinner. (Buffy manages to put a stop to that one by saying Angel doesn't eat actual human food. Does he? She's never asked.) Giles is back with the stammer-y dad vibes and glasses cleaning, because now that he's handed Mrs. Post over to the Watchers' Council he's all tapped out in the unexpected badassery department. (Or the Band Candy's worn all the way off. Maybe that.)

Ms. Calendar has got to be the worst though.

She ambushes Buffy before patrol and pulls her into her classroom. Angel is there too and looks like he has less of an idea of what's going on than she does.

"Please keep in mind that I don't want to have this conversation as much as you do." That is...a really foreboding (can Buffy stop using SAT words now? maybe they're just getting ingrained, ew…) way to start a conversation. Intense Slayer training tells her this could mean like three things. Someone is dead, and since she just left everyone in the library that's a no. The world is ending, well that's Giles's thing to tell her and he already did that last week. Or it's category three, unknown nasties.

Turns out these nasties are of the Gypsy variety. Ms. Calendar has been talking to the members of her Clan (which sets both Buffy and Angel on edge) and they're all very worried that Angel is back. Buffy, for one is just annoyed. Can't she just be a normal girl with a boyfriend before the entire universe gets involved? He has a soul and everything! It's not like she's fallen for an actual creature of the night. The soul changes things.

The soul changes more than she thinks. Ms. Calendar explains that there are certain circumstances in which Angel can lose his soul all over again. Buffy wasn't able to read the parts of the Watcher Diaries that talked about Angelus but the grim look on both his and Ms. Calendar's faces say it's on the badder side of big bad.

"So we avoid it." Buffy says as she stands up. She hates sitting still. Stillness means serious. Usually Ms. Calendar is the same, she's like never still, always walking around, sorting and moving things, typing. Only now she's sitting on her desk with her eyes trained on both of them. "I mean...it's losing a soul, it's gotta be like this big magic ritual thing." She looks hopefully at Ms. Calendar who just sighs.

"The technical term is "moment of perfect happiness."" She explains. That's easy. Perfect happiness. It's the 20th century in Sunnydale, no one is happy! Nothing has to change.

Only Angel's face does. He's staring at Ms. Calendar harder than she is and all the teacher does is nod. "Yeah." What is this, old people telepathy?!

Giles barges in and stops the moment by insisting that Buffy start patrol now if she wants to make it home in time to do her homework and still get a good night's sleep. While he and Ms. Calendar have another serious conversation, Angel insists they split up to cover more ground. Why would they need to do that? Faith's waiting for them, she can cover half… And then Angel looks tortured and says maybe she should go with Faith and he can go alone, and pretty much does the annoying vanishing into the dark with no explanation thing.

Something has changed and Buffy has no idea what. (He doesn't kiss her good night.)

—

But life just keeps going on, changes or no. Giles gets a very stilted letter from the Watchers' Council commending him for capturing Gwendolyn Post (Mrs!) alive and sending her back before she had the chance to do evil, and he insists on putting it on his office wall. Framed.

And then they all get their SAT scores back and she very nearly puts her results up on her own wall, framed, because she's never considered herself smart, not really, and she's still barely pulling through with her classes and she'd gone into the test exhausted and angry after a night of wrangling very drugged adults and saving babies from Lucornis and she's got a 1430. Out of 1600.

That's a good score. That's a 'person with a future' score. That's pretty close to Willow's score, ten points above Cordelia's and Cordelia tests well and has actually good grades. Her mom starts collecting college pamphlets and Giles gives up being stuffy and British for a moment and hugs her so tight she thinks it'd bruise someone who didn't have Slayer healing. (And then he says he's shipping off for a Watchers' retreat. Looks like he's getting invited to those now. Yay?)

So anyway, Buffy's stuck with a semi-boyfriend she can't even kiss anymore, really, and with Willow talking her ear off about college and her mom talking her ear off about college and Faith, who says this whole college thing is for losers and then sits Buffy down and asks her where she'd like to go.

"I mean, if you were a…loser nerd," Faith mutters. Buffy tells her she has no idea.

—

Ms. Calendar, who is trying very hard to act like she doesn't have a track record of ruining Buffy's life for the greater good, decides that the Wicca club should perform some sort of ritual on the night of the full moon. It's clearly exciting enough to take Willow off the topic of colleges and SATs for a little while. (Though really, is magic the better topic? She's not sure magic's the better topic.)

"What's it do?" Buffy asks, as Willow cheerily cycles the logo on her sweater through a variety of cutesy animals. She settles on a very fluffy kitten before answering.

"The ritual? No idea, but…" She giggles. "But, well, Giles had like a fit about it, so you know it has to be good."

"Uh-huh," says Buffy, who suddenly sorta would rather be talking about SAT scores. "Well, Ms. Calendar's probably the safe kinda magic, right?" Willow makes a face.

"We're connecting with the eternal feminine, I don't think there's gonna be anything Hellmouthy."

"Will, you know you just doomed it, right?" Buffy says wearily, and Willow goes all wide-eyed and furrows her eyebrows and puts her hand to her mouth.

"Oh no!" she wails. "I didn't mean it, I really didn't! I, um, It's not going to be a lame ritual at all! You hear me?" She shakes her fist in the general direction of the Hellmouth. "I'm, I'm un-jinxing this in the name of the Gate and Key!" Buffy rolls her eyes and laughs and says that she's sure that'll do it, that nothing bad's going to interrupt Ms. Calendar's moon ritual thing.

—

(She's getting her sixth different lecture about college from Cordelia, who either wants her to leave town or herself to leave town but either way is so many kinds of on board with going to college out of state, so she doesn't see the car that smashes down the Welcome to Sunnydale sign or the drunken bleached-blond vampire driving it.)

—

So she goes out patrolling like normal, splits routes with Faith like normal, tries to automatically check in with Giles as she leaves like normal only to remember that Giles it at Watcher Camp, waves at Willow in Ms. Calendar's classroom where they're pushing desks out of the way, prepping for the ritual, and goes out into the dark.

So, what happens while both she and Faith are out patrolling is, of course, that vampires converge upon the school because Spike is back in town and looking for someone who can do magic. (Funny thing, apparently vampires can't really magic for themselves.) Angel turns up out of the blue to tell her as much, but he won't touch her and he won't meet her eyes.

"Look, what's going on?" she asks. Angel sighs.

"Spike has Willow and the rest of the Wicca club trapped in a classroom," he answers, which sure is an answer to a pressing question but not the one she was trying to ask. Some part of her mind says that Willow was just asking for trouble, but she shushes it. Willow was sort of asking for spells gone weird, not evil vampires with black nail polish.

(What's actually happening in the computer science classroom is a lot less doom-ful than Angel's words would suggest. Spike is drunk and tearful, his minions, freshly re-recruited from Trick's mercenary squads, are considering turning on him, and Jenny Calendar is carefully maneuvering the conversation away from murder and to literally anything else. Spike has a one-track mind, so she mainly tries to get him to either talk out his issues with Drusilla or to try to find a way to move on. Either way she wants him to leave. At least she's managed to convince him that the students in the Wicca Club can't do any actual magic. Mercifully they, for once, stay quiet.

But Buffy's not there to see that.)

So she charges back to the school and Angel comes with and Principal Wood shows up with his whole anti-vamp kit (there's an awkward moment there where he and Angel size each other up, but hey, bigger fish to fry) and they split up because Wood and Angel agree that a coordinated pincer attack would be best. Because, y'know, they're clearly the ones in charge here, not like she's the Slayer or anything.

She kicks down the door to find the whole ritual-looking chalk and candles stuff still in place, most of the Wicca club cowering in corners wielding makeshift stakes and crosses and holy water, Willow dangling a vampire from the ceiling and looking very proud of herself while three other vamps put their heads together, and Ms. Calendar sitting on the floor looking annoyed with Spike curled against her neck. He'd look very much like he was biting her if he wasn't audibly sniveling.

"Buffy! Hi Buffy!" Willow calls out as she promptly drops the vampire she's dangling. (He recovers his senses and scrambles over to join his buddies.) Spike sort of jerks into a moderately upright position but almost falls over.

"Slayer!" he sort of half-yells half slurs.

"Hi," says Buffy. "Kidnapping's bad."

"Didn't take 'em anywhere…" Spike is really, really drunk. One of the backup vamps rolls his eyes, and really Buffy's never empathized with a soulless creature of the night quite on this level.

"Not the point," she says, and pulls out a stake. "This is the point, okay?" Spike stares at her dully for a moment.

"My heart's already broken, Slayer," he says mournfully, and holy shit is that the most melodramatic thing since melodrama, she hates vampires. "And your mate Wood already put a whozit in my chest, so there's not any room."

And she's about to say that she'll find some when one of the henchvamps nods at the others and two charge her while the other two go for Spike, who goes down like a vodka-fueled lead weight, and that's when the windows slam open but whoops, Slayer-time, she's not paying attention to the rest of this.

She dusts the two vamps dumb enough to attack her, has a moment of puzzlement when she finds the third upside down but apparently Willow's back in action, and turns back to see Wood helping Ms. Calendar to her feet and Spike flat on the ground beside them. No sign of vamp four, so someone must've gotten him. Angel pokes Spike with his foot.

"Get up," he orders.

"M'not getting possessed again," says Spike, still face-down. "S'not worth it, none of it's worth it."

"His girlfriend left him," says Ms. Calendar. "You know, the crazy one that tried to kill all of us that one time that he kidnapped me while I got possessed by a harbinger of the apocalypse."

"Oh," says Angel. "I think I missed that one."

"Y'know, just an ordinary day on the Hellmouth!" says Buffy cheerfully. "Also there were evil lawyers."

"Wolf'am and bloody Hart," says Spike.

"And I seem to remember you promising to never come back," Wood points out coldly, but Angel does the thing he sometimes does when he interrupts without actually saying anything, and hauls Spike to his feet by the jacket collar.

"Bugger that," says Spike. "Bugger this, bugger that, bugger you… You especially, Angelus."

"Okay," says Angel, expressionless. "Bye now. Enjoy your… Esbat ritual?" Ms. Calendar gives an encouraging nod. "Esbat ritual." How does he know that? "We're leaving." And he drags Spike out a window and into the night.

"Right," says Ms. Calendar, taking a deep breath. "And now that that's over, let's please form a circle—Amy, could you get my spare candles, thank you. Buffy, Robin, will you be joining us?"

"I'm not sure it'd be proper," says Wood. So of course, they end up joining the circle and listening to Ms. Calendar talk about light and magic that flows over the whole world. It's sorta nice. It's the nice kind of magic, she thinks, not the demon-summony kind or the evil witch kind or the Gypsy curse kind. This kind, maybe, she could learn to like.

—

The next day dawns bright and late-autumn-sunny, the sort of day that smells like what you'd imagine the autumn spreads in a catalogue would smell like. Buffy thinks maybe the happy moon charging times ritual worked on some level, because everything feels clean and less Hellmouthy than usual. As she leaves the house and waves goodbye to her mom, who is giggling on the phone with someone called Francis, Buffy feels a spring in her step. Energy, maybe. Moonlight and the eternal feminine.

And then Cordelia catches her by the arm as she's crossing the school parking lot.

"Careful," Cordelia says. "There's breakup in the air."

"No," Buffy says, trying to sound her most reciting-a-prophecy. "No, there is pumpkin spice and happy things in the air." Cordelia gestures vaguely with her drink, which does smell all pumpkin.

"Well, don't say I didn't warn you," she says. "And by the way, we're not talking to you guys anymore."

"Yeah, noticed."

"Good." Cordelia hesitates a moment, then spots some guy pulling into a parking space and goes off to Cordelia at him with a smile that halfway winning and halfway rictus grin.

But Cordelia's doing that annoying thing where she's right, because Buffy's about to walk into the library when she hears what's definitely a break up going on, albeit one that's a lot calmer than Xander and Chuxi's.

"I don't understand," Willow is saying, her voice wavering. "Don't–don't you like me?" Oh no.

"Of course I do," Oz says. "I liked you before we even started talking. I thought… It's not a matter of like. Or love. Or me."

"Then what is it? What did I do wrong?" The question hangs in the air for a long moment.

"Do you…" Oz starts, then stops again. "We're in different places, and I don't know where you're going. And you don't know where I'm going."

"We—we both have classes," Willow says, choking up. "We're going to classes, and then we're going to graduate, and then we're going to college–"

"I'm graduating in December," says Oz. "Not the best time to tell you, but I could't find you."

"Oh," says Willow, too quietly. "Oh. Well. Good for you." Her voice rises in pitch and volume at the same time. "Good for you! You've, you've only had to do an extra semester, and and and, and that's great. You can go live your not-high school life!" And that's a cue, Buffy thinks, and pushes open the library doors.

"Oh, hey guys!" (She doesn't have a good read on Oz's facial expressions, but she thinks he looks sort of relieved.)

"Buffy!" Willow chokes back tears, wipes at her face, then flings her arms around Buffy's neck. "Buffy, we're gonna be super, okay?"

"Sure," says Buffy hugging her tightly as Willow's fluffy red hair tints deep purple and thinks that they really, really need to get out of the library. (She should be better at this stuff. She's really, really not.) "C'mon, you need to teach me French by sixth period."

"French. Yeah." Willow clings for a moment longer, then pulls away and wipes her eyes (glitter-lined) and smiles really big in a way that really doesn't look smiley at all.

"French and ice cream," Buffy says. "Come on."

There's no ice cream and also no French-learning but Willow eats five cups of chocolate pudding and tells her that Oz probably had a point.

"I don't know where I'm going," Willow says, staring into space past Buffy's shoulder. "I don't… I used to know, and now I don't."

"We'll go together," Buffy promises. "That's what best friends are for." Willow morosely stacks her pudding cups.

"You, me, and the great adventure, huh?" she says, then bites her lip. "At least this way I know that where I'm going's full of vampires and demons and doom." Buffy probably makes a really good face, because Willow laughs, actually laughs for moment. "I'm kidding! We can go to Disneyland!"

"You, me, and the greatest rollercoasters known to humankind sounds better," says Buffy, and she thinks maybe the day is sorta saved.

(But she's not there after school that day when Willow locks the door to her room and props up a half dozen different binders and notebooks full of information on changing curses, including several marked up in Mr. Rayne's sprawling script. She's not there to see the boxes of herbs and candles and the folded up paper with the ritual designs, or the amulets charged at the previous night's ritual, or the little silver penknife meant to pierce the skin of a willing sacrifice. She doesn't see any of it, and she doesn't see Willow's eyes go black.)

 _A/N -_ _And I think this is an opportune moment to announce this fic's going on hiatus next week. Expect assorted side-fic and come yell at me on Tumblr ( 23Murasaki there too), but you won't learn what Willow's gone and done until... Saturday, probably._


	17. 1998, Winter (2)

Her dreams are butterfly-free that night. Instead, she dreams she's walking barefoot through a graveyard she doesn't recognize. Far away, people are screaming, but she ignores them and keeps walking forward. Drusilla falls into step beside her, black lace and red lipstick.

"Tick-tock, tick-tock," Drusilla murmurs. "Whose is the hand that winds the clock?" She smiles distantly. "It doesn't have to be anyone's in particular, you know."

—

Christmas, and sort of winter break in general, always creeps up on Buffy. Probably because she lives where it rarely ever snows. Of course she'd seen snow in California, once, when she was a kid, but mostly it was just a year-round warmness that got warmer and less warm but stayed generally… well, California-temperature. But she got her Mom a really nice scarf and left plenty of hints about a really cute pair of boots she saw at Bloomies. She wouldn't even use them for slaying, honest!

But the point is that Christmas and winter and the whole shebang is upon them again, but things aren't very Christmas-y. Or Non-Denominational-Winter-Holiday-y, as Jesse puts it, after Willow threatens to paste Hanukah-themed stuff over every single paper reindeer at the school. Everything's sort of terrible, actually. No one's talking to anyone, and Angel's gone and vanished, and really, Giles isn't even helping a little.

(The one time she attempts an unscheduled Giles-office-visit she finds him and Ms. Calendar making out like they're on the Band Candy again. Buffy clears her throat and they nearly jump away from each other. She finds out later that she's not the only one to have walked in on a makeout session, which is just ew.)

But the important thing is that she can't find Angel. He's not even Borneo-gone, not gone away, because everyone including Giles and Ms. Calendar (when confronted separately) says that he's still in town, he's just, like, vanished. He's never home when she visits, and he's never out when she's patrolling, and she's really starting to worry because the last time she'd seen him he'd been dragging Spike off somewhere. (Ms. Calendar says Angel can take care of himself, but Ms. Calendar has a vested interest in Angel being gone.)

"Maybe he's planning a Winter Holidays surprise for you!" says Willow cheerily. "That'd be nice!"

"Yeah," says Buffy, but she's way less than convinced. "Do you… know something about that?"

"Nope!" Willow's grin fades slightly. "Haven't seen him either. Maybe it's a really really secret surprise?"

"Maybe," she answers, and ignores the voice in the back of her mind screaming that something's wrong.

—

When Spike, rather than Angel, crashes one of her patrols, Buffy decides she's never gonna doubt her instincts again.

"Where's Angel?" she asks sharply. Spike scowls down at her (from up a tree, because he's up a tree and staked another vampire from up there).

"Merry bloody Christmas to you too, Slayer. Didn't I just do you a favor?" She tries out her best makes-high-schoolers-shut-up glare and repeats the question. "Angel's not here right now."

"That's not an answer," she tells him. Spike's scowl turns into a grimace, and in the moonlight she notes that he's injured—some red, twisting mark across his neck, and a missing pair of black-painted fingernails on his hand.

"Maybe I don't want to tell you, has that crossed your mind?" the vampire snaps. "I'm not part of your little band of misfits."

"Yeah, duh," says Buffy. "But you're up a tree and playing nice so tell me where the hell Angel is." Spike folds his arms.

"Locked up," he says finally. "And don't look at me like that. He asked me to. Says it's a favor, lock him and and hit him if he wants out." There's around fifty things Buffy wants to yell and another dozen she wants to attack Spike with, but she bites down on the impulse.

"Why?" she asks instead, because the whys and wherefores, Giles says, are half the battle won. "What happened?"

"How should I know?" Spike grumbles. "I… He was his bloody useless stupid brooding self, and then he wasn't, and then he was again, and then he asked to be chained up and locked up. Believe me, after a few hours of him whining I was more than happy to oblige."

"What do you mean he wasn't?" Buffy asks, feeling like she's missing a very large piece of a puzzle that everyone's expecting her to put together without any pictures and while Giles kisses Ms. Calendar within her field of vision. Spike stares at her.

"You really don't know, do you?" he asks. "What'd you think they called him the Scourge of Europe for? His singing?"

"But he has a soul now." And that makes all the difference, doesn't it? That's enough, isn't it? The soul and the curse and Ms. Calendar's family and Borneo and Angel not wanting to be alone with her anymore, isn't all that enough?

"Yeah, well," says Spike. "Looks like it's getting a bit loose, the soul." He bares his teeth. "Isn't that neat."

"Take me to him," Buffy hears her own voice say. "I need to know you're not lying to me."

—

Angel's secured to the wall by heavy iron chains, but he jumps to his feet at the sight of her, worry evident on his face.

"Buffy! You— you shouldn't be here!"

"Definitely the biggest problem here," Spike drawls. "Maybe she'll stake you and put you out of your misery, Angelus."

"You, shut up," Buffy orders, waving a stake in Spike's general direction and thinking, for the first time all evening, that this was maybe, possible, sort of something like a trap. "Angel, what's going on?"

"Told you, your precious boyfriend's losing his soul," says Spike.

"That's not possible, though. Right?" Just… she'll just ignore everything Ms. Calendar had said about perfect happiness, because Angel doesn't look even a little happy. "Angel, it's not possible, right?"

"I don't know what's happening to me," Angel says, all quiet. "I just know it's not safe anymore."

"I'll fix it," she tells him. "I'll fix this, and then, and then you'll be okay. I promise, okay?" Angel shivers, and god he looks anything but okay. "I'll fix it," she repeats, and kisses him. Even with her eyes closed, she can feel him smile.

"Stay," he says, leaning forward to run his lips to the edge of her jaw. "Stay. It's better when you're here…" Her breath catches in her throat, but the sensible part of her mind screams that there's something wrong, this is the trap, this is what's wrong, and she jerks away as fast as she can.

There's a smiling demon wearing Angel's handsome face, but it's not Angel, it's not Angel, Angel doesn't smile like that and the eyes are all wrong and the way it moves is all wrong, and she stumbles back and almost trips over herself.

"You do that, Slayer," Spike drawls. "You fix him right back up. I'm sure that'll work."

—

She waylays Willow between classes the next morning and tells her everything. Willow says 'what' so loudly and so many times in a row and with such distress and Buffy's worried she'll attract attention, but they're left alone.

"Listen, we can't tell anyone," she insists in a low voice. "Ms. Calendar warned me and Angel about the curse, and there's no… if I did something to him, I want to fix it. No one else can know."

"Okay," says Willow instantly. "Don't worry! I won't tell anyone, not even Giles. We'll fix this." She looks as scared as Buffy feels, but there's a determined glint in her eye. "There's spells and things, and we're good at research, and, and…" She trails off for a moment, then throws her arms around Buffy's neck. "And we've not gotten it wrong yet, have we?"

"Right," she says. "We haven't."

—

They bury themselves in books and research in the library, but Buffy doesn't even know where to start. That's a Giles thing to know, but she can't go to Giles. It's not a Buffy thing to know.

"Curse breaking and alteration," says Willow confidently, dropping another two books onto the table beside her. "That's what it is, right? He was cursed with a soul, so if the curse is wearing off we need to fix it."

"Yeah, okay," Buffy says, picking up one of the books at random. It's in … Russian, maybe? She's not sure. The one she'd been reading was a history of vampire lore, but at least that'd been in a language she knew. "Will? I can't…" The other book is in Latin. (You'd think a school on a Hellmouth would offer Latin classes, but it doesn't.)

"Oh, languages. Right." Willow rubs at her eyes. "Um, maybe I can… Here, I'll go through these, and you look for Angelus in Giles's Watcher diaries. There should be something in there, right? They like to write things down!"

"And they usually do it in English," Buffy agrees. "Can you read Russian?" Willow blinks up at her in confusion, then grins.

"There's a spell. Don't worry about it. Go read Giles's diary! Or, well, the diary collection, I guess, they're not his…" She winces. "Um, not really the time for funny-Willow. Books now."

The Watchers' journals in Giles's (mercifully empty) office go into no small amount of detail about Angelus, mostly about how completely batshit evil he was. Some of the notes go into the general evilness. He tortured his victims before he killed them, called it artistry. He murdered thousands. He slaughtered his entire village when he was first turned. Others are more specific. He nailed a puppy to a door on Valentine's Day. He beat a guy to death with his own arm on his wedding day. He killed a man's wife and baby then turned a toddler and made her father kill her. He tortured a girl for months on end, tortured her into insanity, until he turned her… Drusilla she thinks, that was Drusilla, and the the thought is enough to make her put the book down. (Tortured for months on end… had she been sane and happy once? Had she smiled and sneezed and shopped once?)She feels sick. (But it wasn't Angel, it wasn't Angel who did those things. It was Angelus. That's a different creature entirely, isn't it?)

"Buffy!" Willow's voice interrupts her thoughts, and a moment later Willow herself pretty much tackles her out of her seat. "Buffy! I got it!" She's waving around the book that's in Russian, and she's so excited that her sparkles have sparkles. (It's a bit blinding.)

"The spell?" Buffy prompts. Willows nods and taps a passage in the book that sure does have a reoccurring pattern of letters Buffy can't read. "Okay, okay, great. I need to… I need to know what to do. Can you tell me what to do?" Willow blinks at her for a moment, then hugs her tight.

"Yeah. It says right here. I'll walk you through it, promise."

So they do the spell, with Willow hanging onto her hands and stammering through incantations and Buffy wondering if magic is supposed to feel like someone is yanking the marrow out of your bones (though she'd let all her marrow get yanked out if that meant helping Angel). The light changes around them, and (this time she does see) Willow's eyes go from hazel to pitch black, black like the sky without stars, and when the spell stops, it leaves her cold and shaken.

"Did it work?" she asks, and wishes she knew more about magic. Willow's eyes are green again, but they're way too bright.

"Yes," Willow says. "It worked. It has to work—I used your power, and you're a superhero."

—

(Across town, Spike flinches and snarls at the near scent of a change in the air. A low laugh comes from his prisoner, a laugh he knows entirely too well.

"Angelus," he says. "Fancy seeing you here, old man."

"Aw, you really don't sound that happy to see me," Angelus drawls. "No flowers, no hug, not even the still warm heart of a virgin. It's almost like you wanted me to stay gone! But guess what? I'm back, baby!" His laugh raises in pitch and volume.

"Indeed you are," Spike mutters.

"I just wish Dru were here," Angelus goes on. "Probably been a while since she's had a real man. Had to settle for you. If you want you could bring her down here, better bring a pen and paper to take notes. You know I always wondered what she saw in you. But now I get it Spike ol' boy. Why have a real man when she had me. She wanted a puppy, someone she could lead around by the balls-" Spike whirls around and hits him in the face, but Angelus seems utterly unruffled. He even seems to enjoy it. "That's all you were good for wasn't it William? Being led around by a woman. Your mother, Drusilla, and now the Slayer." His eyes get wider with glee. "Now speaking of…")

—

The spell didn't work.

Buffy knows that before she knows that, before she sees Angelus laughing through a facefull of his own blood, before Spike throws the key to his shackles at her and leaves, before she goes back to where Willow is supposed to be waiting for her and finds her long gone. She knows it from the moment the air goes cold around her.

She spends the night sitting awake in her room, trying to plan her next move (she should tell Giles, she won't tell Giles, she can't tell Giles), but all her planning is in vain because there's a stranger in Ms. Calendar's classroom the next morning, and he's brought the storm with him. He and Ms. Calendar are trying to have a hushed argument, but neither of them are very hush people so they're sort of whisper-yelling in a language Buffy doesn't know. They fall silent at the sight of her, and Ms. Calendar switches back to English with what looks like effort.

"Buffy. Can we talk?" says Ms. Calendar, and it's super not a question, and she already knows that it's going to be about Angel before Ms. Calendar sort of pushes her and the strange man into her office and shuts the door.

"This is the Slayer?" asks the man, and Ms. Calendar nods.

"Yes. Buffy, this is my brother, Vano. Vano, this is Buffy." The man, Vano, stares at her coldly. Up close Buffy can really see the family resemblance between him and Ms. Calendar—they both have the same thick black hair and dark eyes, but that's about where the similarities end. Ms. Calendar is a little bit taller, probably because of the heels, While Vano looks a lot more muscular. (They both look stormy-serious now, but usually Ms. Calendar smiles a lot, while Buffy is pretty sure this guy has never smiled in his entire life.)

"Are you behind this?" Vano asks— or really more like demands. (At least Ms. Calendar tries for a little bit of conversation before bringing down awful news. At least when Ms. Calendar ruins things she tries to be nice about it.)

"Behind what?" Buffy asks, and hopes she sounds innocent. She can't tell anymore. On some level she thinks Willow's spell's left a mark on her, something Ms. Calendar and her brother should be able to see. It feels like it. Like a big neon sign that screams her guilt to the whole world. Vano's scowl deepens.

"The weakening of the Kalderash curse," he says curtly. His voice changes when he says Kalderash, the same way Ms. Calendar's does only more. "Are you behind it?"

"No," says Buffy. "I never–" But nevers won't help, she thinks. She's guilty. "Whatever happened to Angel, it wasn't happiness."

"I told you she can be trusted," says Ms. Calendar, and Buffy wants to scream that no one's trusting her with anything except maybe dying for a prophecy (because they sure trusted her with that) and shouldn't Giles be in here too? Vano scoffs.

"Yes, and the girl clearly isn't lying." Sarcasm must be a family trait. "Being out here for so long's made you even more gullible, Janna. Uncle Enyos won't be pleased when he finds out you've failed despite our warnings."

"I sent him to fucking Borneo!" says Ms. Calendar, throwing up her hands. "I don't know what else you people want me to do!"

"Is something wrong with Angel?" Buffy asks, even though what she wants to ask is 'can you fix what's wrong with Angel'. Ms. Calendar shakes her head.

"Vano says the elder woman says the curse is … cracking," she explains. "Not that anyone has so far bothered to suggest how or why." She folds her arms and glares pointedly at her brother.

"You've been told how that curse can be broken," Vano snaps. "So either you've completely failed in your task on that front, or someone's messing with the magic itself." His lip curls into a sneer. "And you and your little 'cyber coven' surely'd notice if something like that happened, huh?"

Ms. Calendar says something sarcastic in response, but Buffy can't really hear her over the pounding in her ears. Someone's messing with the magic itself. She thinks of Willow, smiling too brightly over a book neither of them should be able to read, thinks of the weird light in her eyes and the cold air around them, thinks 'I used your power, and you're a superhero.' (She thinks of Ms. Calendar on the phone with the motel front desk, trying to track down creepy Ethan because Willow's been acting weird since she met him, since she started citing 'Mr. Rayne' as a viable source.)

"Ms. Calendar?" All three of them turn sharply to see Willow standing in the door, all wide eyes and the jacket that smells like someone else's aftershave. "Is something wrong?" Giles is standing behind her, looking worried but the worry on his face is rapidly turning into something a lot worse.

"Jenny?" he prompts. Buffy can't breathe.

"Willow," she whispers, and she doesn't mean to whisper it but she can't find air enough to talk. "Willow, what did you do?"


	18. 1998, Winter (3)

It was like everything was happening in slow motion. Ms. Calendar is paling, Vano is starting to look downright dangerous. There's a look of fundamental horror spreading over Giles's face. For a moment she thinks Willow's going to cry, but she doesn't, she shoves her hands in her jacket pockets and looks at Buffy like nothing's wrong at all.

"What do you mean?" she asks. Her eyes are all wrong, her pupils are too big and there's something behind them that wasn't there before. (But it was there, it had been there, the annoying voice in the back of Buffy's mind points out. It had been there for months now, since before the summer.)

"Angel," says Ms. Calendar curtly. "She means Angel."

"There was a spell," Buffy hears herself say. "She– Willow found it in one of the books in the library." (Had she, had she really? Buffy can't be sure, she couldn't read the text herself…) "We… she said it'd help, and Angel was already… he was already…" She trails off. Willow sighs.

"Angel was already losing his soul," she says. "I don't know why. I thought, Buffy and I thought we could help, only we must have been too late with the spell." She sounds reasonable. Buffy almost believes her, except for the part where she knows it's all wrong (and the air had been so cold, and Willow had smiled like everything had gone like she wanted it.) "I'm, I'm really sorry we were too late with the spell, but it took so long to find it, and, and I had to translate it–"

"Do you have it now?" Giles asks. He's being very quiet and sort of filling up the whole doorway behind Willow. "The spell. The translation."

"It's in my locker," Willow says. "I can, I can go get it, let me go get it?" Giles steps aside, and Willow darts past him almost before Buffy can blink. He grabs her by the jacket, and for a split second Willow is glaring at him with such fury that there's no way that's really Willow, there's no way. The next moment the look's gone.

"Let's you and I go together, shall we?" says Giles, and it's not really a question. There's a moment's delay, just a moment, before Willow smiles blankly and says okay. Giles tightens his grip on Willow's arm, and the two of them head for her locker, shutting the door behind them.

Ms. Calendar holds up a hand to her brother who looks like he's about to say something. "Van, shut up. Buffy," she points to one of the few open chairs in the room, "start explaining. Now."

She tries to make with the explaining, but every sentence that comes out of her mouth sounds like it should have more explaining attached to it and Vano's glaring at her and Ms. Calendar looks like murder.

"Spike said that Angel was, was losing his soul so I…" So she followed a vampire who'd tried to kill her more than once to a crypt where he was keeping her sort of boyfriend chained up. Wow, what a plan that'd been. "And he was, Spike wasn't lying, which is sort of weird because I really thought it was a trap but I mean look at that, right? He really did just have Angel locked up there. And, and, you'd told me about the curse." She pauses and looks at Ms. Calendar and wishes she could look over at Giles for an explanation or general Watcher-y talk but he's not there of course. "And I still don't know what you meant, but Angel wasn't happy even before… before…"

Vano cuts her off "Angelus is locked up?" Ms. Calendar sighs and rubs her temple.

"Okay, one piece of good news here. We don't have a deranged supernatural mass murderer roaming the town." No, they have a deranged supernatural mass murderer chained to wall technically under the supervision of another deranged supernatural mass murderer, oh this is going over really well.

"He, he asked Spike to…" Buffy sighs. "Okay, listen. This isn't… none of this sounds good, but I swear–"

"I think we are done listening to you." Vano snaps. There's a crash outside, metal hitting something. (She knows exactly what it is, she's hit her fair share of people in the face with lockers before, but Giles and Willow…)

"Yeah, but you don't actually know what happened," she says. "There's no way you actually know what happened."

"We don't need to know," he argues. "Clearly thanks to you and the witch, Angelus is back and you," he rounds on Ms. Calendar, "have done nothing to stop this!" Okay, that's just not fair.

"How was she supposed to know?" Buffy snaps. "I didn't tell her anything was wrong– Willow didn't tell her– is she supposed to read minds?" (Well, possibly.) "And it isn't like he's been roaming the streets for months or something, we did the spell yesterday." And Angel'd only been missing a little while, since… now that she thinks about it, since the day after Ms. Calendar's moon ritual thing. That's barely more than a week. That's barely anything.

"That is not the point!" Vano yells as he slams the flat of his hand against the desk. "Plenty of damage can be done in a week! Plenty of damage can be done in a day, damn it. It doesn't matter if this has been going on a little while or a long time, it's her duty– and you're the Slayer, it's your damn duty too!"

"Yeah, and you're just hardcore duty-guy," Buffy snaps, because Ms. Calendar's brother or not no one's gonna yell at her about duty. "Sitting here telling people–"

And then the door sort of crashes open, and the first thing Buffy processes is the smell of blood. Her heart lodges in her throat before the rest of her senses kick in, and then it stays there because the full picture isn't all that much better. Giles has blood on his face from where he's really clearly taken a locker door to the nose, and he's so angry the air around him crackles. Also he's manhandling Willow, who's got a bruise forming over her eye and is scrabbling and flailing in an attempt to get free of his grip.

"Let me go– Giles! Buffy, help!" Buffy takes a step forward, which she's pretty sure is an autonomous response when she hears someone calling for help, but Giles waves Willow's binder at her.

"Do you know what this is?" he asks, and his voice is a low and furious.

"Buffy, he's hurting me!" Willow whimpers, and for god's sake she doesn't even come up to Giles's chin.

"Giles–" says Buffy, at the same time as Ms. Calendar says:

"Rupert, for goodness sake–"

"This," Giles growls, "Is a bloody grimoire." And he throws it down on Ms. Calendar's desk. It drops open to a page covered in notes, Willow's in neat purple gel pen and someone else's in black ink. Ms. Calendar picks it up and starts flipping through the pages.

"And I'm a bloody witch," Willow snaps, apparently sensing that no one is really on her side. "I've heard what you used to get up to, Ripper." Giles flinches. (Flinches!) "You, you really can't talk here." She takes a shaky breath. "Besides, I haven't done anything wrong."

GIles barks a laugh. "Haven't done anything wrong?!"

"I was helping," Willow says, glaring up at him. "I was helping and Buffy was sad and you weren't helping at all because you were too busy kissing Ms. Calendar to actually be useful." Out of the corner of her eye, Buffy saw Ms. Calendar bury her face in her hands. "Mr. Rayne was right about you! You're, you're a hopeless lost cause!"

"Ethan Rayne wouldn't know the truth if it bit him," Giles snaps. "And you are a fool, an arrogant, immature, blind fool if you take anything he has told you as…" He seems to flounder for a word. "–as anything of value!" He takes a deep breath. "That man is, is an abomination, Willow. He is wicked, vindictive, manipulative... I have no doubt that he is using you to further his own mad schemes."

"And I should take your word for it?" Willow shoots back and Buffy tries to grab her arm to pull her back. (Too little too late, but she can't just stand there rooted to the floor.)

"His and mine," says Ms. Calendar. "Because you've just told me that you unleashed Angelus on Sunnydale at the suggestion of a man who drugged and interrogated me over the summer and tried to sacrifice babies to an Old One." Drugged her? Giles looks murderous. Vano looks like he's taking notes, only in a I'm-telling-mom-you-snuck-out way not in an outraged way. Willow flounders.

"You're- you're lying!" she yells, but she looks a lot more like herself all of a sudden, wild hit-Giles-in-the-face anger fading to Willow-desperation. "Mr. Rayne said it would help! Mr. Rayne said if I could change the structure of the curse Angel would keep his soul and he'd stop being dangerous and he, and he and Buffy could be happy and it would be bad anymore!"

Ms. Calendar slams the binder shut. "And you believed him? The man worships chaos! Calm and happy are generally not part of the job description!"

"Well it's not like the forces of all things orderly were getting much done," says Willow sullenly.

"There isn't a single circumstance," says Giles, "where chaos makes anything better." There is a moment of silence, then Ms. Calendar says:

"You were trying to change the structure of the curse?"

"Mr. Rayne said it can be done," Willow says. "Like when, when in chemistry, you can alter a reaction by adding something else to the mix? I thought… It's an old curse, but I remembered what you said about other people's magic and I– I found it, Buffy, you have to believe me, I really did find a way around it, it just must not have worked right, but Mr. Rayne was right and I really found it!"

"No." Ms. Calendar says quietly as she hands the book back to Giles. "What you found was something worse. Willow, you and I are going to have a little talk. Now."

She marches past her brother, seizes Willow by the back of her neck and pushes her out of the office. Buffy follows numbly, and Ms. Calendar leads them into the computer science room before closing the door and pointing for Willow to sit at one of the desks.

"Sit there and listen," she orders. "Don't talk, just listen."

She crosses to her desk and sort of sits on it, looking down on Willow. Buffy's not even the target of her rage and she feels pinned to the spot. Willow's fidgeting with her necklace and the bruise on her eye is turning blue and she looks a bit queasy.

"I really don't know what to address first," Ms. Calendar says, then pauses, sighs, and picks a place to start her lecture. "How about the fact that you were tampering with dangerous and powerful magic, magic that a witch of your experience and skill level did not have any right to even think about going near. That was very old, very dangerous, very dark vengeance magic. The fact that you are as unscathed as you are is incredible dumb luck. You could have been killed-and that would have been the best case scenario."

Her hands are clenching the desk so hard they're turning white. Buffy thinks she must be picturing a worst-case-scenario, one that she herself can't really think up. What happens when a spell like that backfires? All she knows of magic-gone-wrong is the stilted and fearful story she'd gotten about Eyghon, and that's just one case, that just part of one case...

"Secondly, you kept an incredibly dangerous monster in the general public," Ms. Calendar continues. "Angelus is not Angel, he would not have hesitated to kill you, Buffy, me, Giles and everyone else you know and love. You were incredibly reckless and hasty. Again, it is lucky you are alive."

Willow opens her mouth, but Ms. Calendar isn't even close to done and shoots Willow a glare so full of anger that it could possibly do physical harm. Willow deflates.

"And lastly," Ms. Calendar says, taking a shaky breath. "You lied to me. You went behind my back. You stole my supplies and took advantage of my ritual to bring this about. You flagrantly disregarded everything that my family went through and everything that they, and I, stand for. That is a deep violation of my trust and personally an insult. Honestly, I expected better of you, Willow."

There's a moment of silence there. Ms. Calendar looks like she can't believe what just came out of her mouth. Is she done yet? She's not done yet.

"Now my brother, who you made me look like a fool in front of I might add, is calling in the rest of my family to come clean up the mess you've made." She grimaces. "I want you to think long and hard about how lucky you are to be alive and have all of your friends and family because believe me, that is a miracle."

She takes another pause for breath and starts rearranging the crystals on her desk distractedly. Buffy thinks the pink ones are rose quartz and the purple ones are maybe amethysts.

"Tomorrow we are going to go to your house and clear out any and all magical artifacts, spells, enhancements and enablers. I will be going to Rupert, and all your friends and telling them to inform me if they see you using magic. And if you go to the magic shop I will know. The only magic you will be using will be with me. I don't care how unfair you think that is, I know from experience it could be much worse." Ms. Calendar leans back against her desk. "You may speak now," she adds.

Willow's silent for a long moment anyway staring at her own clenched fists on the desk.

"I didn't want to hurt anyone," she says. "It wasn't supposed to hurt anyone."

"But it did," Buffy tells her, even though she wants to say it didn't that everything's fine. (Maybe if she thinks it hard enough, it'll be true and everything will go back to normal.) "It wasn't supposed to but it did."

"I didn't mean it," Willow says, but all the fight and the weird has gone out of her and she's just sitting there looking like a lost little kid even though she's eighteen. (She's eighteen, Buffy thinks. Willow's older than her. She can vote. She's not supposed to be a little kid.)

"How do we fix it?" Buffy asks instead of arguing. "Can we… Is there something we can do to fix it?"

"We do nothing." Ms. Calendar said tersely. "Rupert and I will be taking care of this. Vano is calling members of the Kalderash Clan to reinstate the curse. You will not be a part of this. No arguments." Willow opens her mouth to argue, because of course she does, but Buffy beats her to it.

"Okay." She wants to say literally anything else, but she's tired and it's like she's run out of everything, like she's waking up from a bad dream that wasn't a dream at all. And if anyone can help Angel now, it's the people who gave him a soul to begin with, right? "Okay. I'm… I think I'm taking a sick day, and I think Willow's taking a sick day, and I'm gonna take her home now." Maybe not home, does Willow have all her magic things at home? She just doesn't want to be in school. "Is that okay? We're gonna go now." She grabs Willow by the wrist and starts pulling her towards the door. It's a bit like dragging a bag of books or a sack of potatoes because Willow's gone completely limp.

But Ms. Calendar doesn't stop them, doesn't stop her, and soon she's under sunlight and open skies. It's bright and crisp and beautiful outside, and it's awful because that doesn't fix a thing.


	19. 1998, Before the Holidays

It actually seems fitting that the next few days are really cloudy and gross. Buffy figures the weather has finally caught on to what they all are feeling. At least Willow has ditched the leather jacket and the glitter and is back to sweaters and funny hats again, pretty much back to normal-Willow, back to painfully-quiet-Willow, sitting with her head down and refusing to meet anyone's eyes.

They've taken all her magical doodads from her room and from her locker–the binder-grimoire and the herbs and the amulets and the little silver knife with the bloodstain on the blade (Buffy really doesn't want to know who's blood that is). The grimoire's burned, the herbs, crystals, and amulets are locked away, and Giles pockets the knife while frowning so intensely Buffy sorta thinks he may hurt himself. The leather jacket belonged to 'Mr. Rayne' too, but there's nothing magical about it so when Willow gets particularly teary Ms. Calendar lets her stick it in the back of her closet. And that's that, she supposes. No more weird magic. Just back to normal, normal as it gets.

Everyone's quiet, really, walking on eggshells around Buffy, around Willow, around Giles and Ms. Calendar and the library. Even Xander's not making jokes anymore, and the people in Ms. Calendar's Wicca Club sort of turn away and look busy when they see Willow coming by. They don't even know what happened, Buffy's made sure as few people as possible know what happened, but that doesn't mean the whole school doesn't know about the locker incident and Willow getting yelled at by Ms. Calendar. (People fill in the blanks in the story with all sorts of things. All of them are awful. Some of them sound true.)

Faith, though. Faith's a saving grace. She hangs around and escorts Willow to and from classes when Buffy can't, and talks loud to fill the silence. And Faith has a lot of things to say about a lot of things, including Ms. Calendar's brother, who is still here. Buffy finds herself agreeing with most of them.

"He's an asshole," Faith announces, top volume, putting her feet (and filthy combat boots) up on a table with a lot of books. This time Giles isn't here to glare at her until she puts them down. "He tried to kick Ms. Calendar out of her own bed, then tried to kick me out of mine." (Buffy upgrades Vano Kalderash to a worse jerk than Scott Hope, and Scott's been going around telling everyone that Willow's pregnant.)

Vano isn't the only Kalderash in town, though. (Just probably the rudest.) A lot of older men, and a couple of women have shown up in the last few days, and somehow they've all ended up in the library one way or another. It's starting to feel a little crowded. Giles, being Giles, tries to make small talk with some of them and, being Giles, ends up stammering a lot, "accidentally" locking Vano in the book cage when he REALLY won't shut up, and talking one old guy's ear off (metaphorically) about demons (though Ms. Calendar did say that some of her uncles were demonologists, so in that case he was probably trying to compare notes).

The person who changes the most, though, seems to be Ms. Calendar. First of all, she starts wearing that kerchief that Buffy saw her wearing outside of the museum. She tries to dress it up with curls and dangly earrings, but there really is no covering up that big of a fashion don't, and the more of her relatives show up the less dangly the earrings get. Her clothes get less cool and more...Amish. Plus she stops wearing makeup. Also her jaw now seems to live in the clenched position. Buffy doesn't have a lot of experience with big close families but shouldn't Ms. Calendar be at least a little glad to see them? (Unless they're all like Vano The Jerk.) She should at least look like herself.

But they're there and they're supposedly helping Angel, so Buffy keeps her head down. (Well, she keeps her head down Kalderash-family-wise. School-things-wise she strikes a deal with Cordelia to rein in some of the weirder rumors and is relieved to find that in a day flat people have stopped suggesting that Willow is having Giles's kid. Or Amy's invisible boyfriend's kid. It's something.)

Only the Kalderash clan does more than take up the entire library and try to kick Faith off of Ms. Calendar's couch, which she finds out a bit later than she probably should, but whatever. She's passing by the computer room on the way to escort Willow to her math class when she hears a familairly unfamiliar voice and slows down, just a little bit. To investigate.

"Really Janna, must you stare at that computer so much?" A stout older woman is standing behind Ms. Calendar as she works on her computer.

"Mama, it's my job," says Ms. Calendar wearily, and Buffy does a lowkey double-take. Whoa. This is Ms. Calendar's mom. Buffy stops just outside the classroom and listens in, because thanks Slayer hearing. Also because she can't even imagine what it would be like to have your mother following you around at school. Suddenly she's very grateful her own mother has the gallery. And friends. And, like, a life.

"Really, why won't you come and see this boy. It's a perfect match, and Janna, dear, you aren't getting any younger," Ms. Calendar's mom is saying. She sounds really into the idea, and like they've been having this conversation for a long time.

"So you keep telling me." Ms. Calendar sighs under her breath. Her mom keeps going, all mom-on-a-mission-style.

"And I want to see grandchildren–"

"You already have grandchildren."

"–before you get too old." Ms. Calendar's not old, Buffy thinks loudly. Ms. Calendar herself seems to share the sentiment.

"Mama, I'm 29. Not 49." Ms. Calendar sounds like she's had this conversation before. A lot.

"Are you eating enough? No man will marry a girl who is too skinny." Well, Ms. Calendar may have a Slayer-like metabolism, because Buffy's seen her eat five donuts in one sitting and she's still skinny. Her mom may be fighting a losing battle there.

"Look, Mom, I really have a lot of work to do here so why don't you–"

"Really, Janna where are your manners." It doesn't sound like a question even a little bit. "When your family comes to town, you make time for them. Did this town take all your manners?" The only sound that answers is the sound of slightly louder typing. "Janna, I am talking to you." Buffy isn't sure if she wants to laugh because this is funny or because spying makes her feel so uncomfortable, but she has to press a hand to her mouth to smother giggles because wow does she not want to get caught doing anything at all by Ms. Calendar's mom of all people. Or, now that she thinks about it, a grumpy Ms. Calendar.

"Mama. For the fourth time, I have a job. That I need to be able to afford an apartment, and clothing, and food. Food for both me and a Slayer with a seemingly bottomless appetite. So please, go talk to Van or Iulia and let me take care of things?" That sets Ms. Calendar's mom (Mrs. Calendar? Mrs. Kalderash.) on a mostly-not-in-English but clearly annoyed tirade, but also just then the bell rings and Buffy remembers she's actually supposed to be doing something. Right.

(At least when she tells Willow about it, Willow laughs. It's something)

Only once Willow is safely escorted, Buffy catches the tail end of Mrs. Kalderash's rant, which includes an announcement that she's going to ask 'that nice librarian' a few questions, and really there are so many things in life that are more important than sitting through another boring English class, aren't there?

So Buffy bolts down to the library, because as much as she doesn't ever want to think about Giles and Ms. Calendar being together, she does want to see how Watcher-man reacts to his girlfriend's mother.

The answer is not well. Buffy beats Mrs. Kalderash to the library and gets to see the full thing of Giles trying to offer her tea out of a bright yellow mug that says "KISS THE LIBRARIAN". Buffy wonders if Ms. Calendar gave him that because there was no way Giles would buy that for himself. Buffy is pretty sure the only time his face went redder was when she told him about the giant hickey on his neck. This time she giggles a little. And, no, she'd been right the first time, with the shutting up, because Mrs. Kalderash turns and zeroes in on her through the bookshelves with the sort of intensity only moms can do, and she's only saved from an uncomfortable conversation about why she's hiding in the ritual summonings section by the timely arrival of Faith, who bursts through the door and yells:

"Holy shit, you're Ms. Calendar's mom!" and then follows it up with: "Hey, B, Watcher-man, there's something biting ankles in the girls' bathroom. I'm gonna kill it dead!" Mrs. Kalderash frowns, one hand on her hip and the other still holding the yellow mug. Giles polishes his glasses with the air of a man who wants to sink directly into the Hellmouth beneath him.

"Are you one of Janna's students?" Mrs. Kalderash asks. Faith looks puzzled, then sort of shrugs and goes with it.

"I mean, I go to school here now," says Faith. "B, you wanna kill something?"

"You both should be in class," says Giles very quietly. "You both need to be in class."

"We'll make it a quick bathroom-ankle-biter-Slaying," Buffy promises. "Uh, enjoy your tea!"

She finds out later that while she and Faith were killing evil carnivorous bathroom slugs (seriously, where had they even gotten an infestation of that?), Mrs. Kalderash'd found out that Giles had locked her son in the book cage (thanks, Vano The Jerk!), that there are books on demon summoning in the library (thanks, Andrew-from-Wicca-club and also Giles's incomprehensible filing system!), that Ms. Calendar runs the Wicca club, and that Faith's been sleeping on Ms. Calendar's couch. Buffy also finds out that somehow the whole Ms. Calendar dating Giles thing did not come up, because Mrs. Kalderash may be pitching a fit but she's not pitching quite that level of a fit.

"Thought Ms. C's name's Jenny?" Faith asks, after like six Kalderash family members very don't call her Jenny. Buffy tries to cool-girl shrug too.

"Parents, you know," she hedges. "I think it's a… a whatsit. And Englishification." Buffy also really doesn't want to explain the whole thing about Ms. Calendar being sent here to watch Angel, and the whole thing about her lying to everyone, and then the whole thing about the sending Angel to Borneo and being in cahoots with creepy Ethan… Actually, Ms. Calendar fits in with her family more than Buffy thought.

—

Turns out that whole 'wrecking your life for the greater good' thing? Definitely a Kalderash trait. Ms. Calendar's creepiest uncle sits all of Buffy's friends down and gives them a half-hour lecture on Angelus, souls, and creative methods of murder. Which, yeah, probably helpful in the long term, but he scares the heck out everyone and Xander's jumping at shadows for like the rest of the day.

But creepy uncle man and Mrs. Kalderash and all the rest of them go see Angel (Angelus?) and come back with a plan to fix the curse and also put Angel's soul back the way it was so he can suffer properly but also so that he doesn't go kill people.

"I did do it, then," Willow says, and she looks sorta proud of herself. "Mr. Rayne was right. I could change it, I did change it."

"But that's bad," says Buffy firmly. (Why does she need to keep saying things like this to people?) Willow blinks, then nods.

"Yeah. Bad. In this case it's bad." Oh, whatever. They've taken all her magic stuff away and creepy Ethan's vanished without a trace, so that's close enough.

—

Spike crashes her patrol again, and she very nearly stakes him by accident and then very nearly stakes him on purpose.

"I mean, go ahead and do it, but who's gonna babysit Angelus then?" he says once there's a tall gravestone between them. "Not the crazy gypsies, I'd say. Bloke they parked in my crypt ran off crying like a baby after ten minutes." There's a lot to process in that sentence, so Buffy takes a minute and decides to focus on what's clearly the most important bit of the whole thing.

"Wait, does Mrs. Kalderash know you're the one keeping an eye on Angel?" Spike shrugs and tries to look nonchalant but mostly just looks uncomfortable.

"Said I was one of your Watcher's contacts," he mutters. "When they kept on asking questions about it. Figured they wouldn't take anything Angelus said seriously."

So that's how she ends up having a conversation with Giles, Ms. Calendar, Mrs. Kalderash, Faith, the creepy Kalderash uncle, and Principal Wood about why she hasn't killed Spike yet and why he's hanging around, and the whole Drusilla story comes out and then the whole dating-Angel story comes out and, well, at least no one's angry at Willow doing magic anymore because now they're all too busy yelling at her (and each other).

"Look, he doesn't want Angelus loose any more than the rest of us do!" Buffy snaps finally, (and wow she can't believe she's standing up for Spike, but really, he's not the big bad here). "And he's gonna get lost as soon as Angel's back to normal, so it's not like he's moving in or something." (Unlike Ms. Calendar's family, who show absolutely no sign of getting lost and several signs of moving in.)

"And we're taking William the Bloody as a reliable source?" Giles asks, then sort of throws up his hands. "Yes, of course we are, silly me. Hardly the most ridiculous thing."

"Janna, does this happen often?" Mrs. Kalderash asks in a did-you-really-just-try-to-sneak-in-through-the-window-of-the-room-I'm-sitting-in tone of voice. Ms. Calendar crosses her arms.

"It's a Hellmouth, mama," she says, as if that's an explanation. (It sort of is, actually.) Giles looks fidgety.

Creepy-Uncle Kalderash (his name's something with an E, Buffy thinks) starts on about moments of true happiness, but she's heard the whole speech before and it doesn't make any more sense now but it's not like she can interrupt the adult argument to tell everyone she really doesn't get it so she just makes faces at the back of Creepy-Uncle Kalderash's head while he yells at Ms. Calendar and Giles. Ms. Calendar sees her though and has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. If Giles sees her, he doesn't react. Suddenly Buffy's really aware of Faith looking at her oddly.

"What?" she whispers.

"B?" Faith says slowly. "You have literally no idea what they're talking about, do you?"

"Do you?" Buffy says back, because she's absolutely going to break something if she's out of the loop and Faith, who couldn't qualify for old-person-telepathy if she tried, isn't.

"Holy shit, B," says Faith fondly, then pins her arms to her sides and drags her away from the argument. "Yeah, we're straightening this one out."

So that's how Buffy finds out exactly what the curse's (original) loophole is, and then she gets to feel like an idiot because that really, really should've been more obvious to her than it was. Faith grins really big and launches into a Faith-flavored birds and the bees talk, because of course she does. (She wants to say the day can't get any worse, but it totally can so she's not gonna call down supernatural doominess by saying it.)

—

Ms. Calendar's relatives do eventually do what they showed up to do. Giles says that putting Angel's soul back would be a lot simpler that un-hacking the curse (he doesn't say un-hacking, he goes all English and old-fashioned about it, but that's the general gist), so it turns into a super long extended family extravaganza, and pretty much just before they're done Creepy Uncle Enchilada says that they're going to leave Angel locked up anyway.

"But that's not fair!" she yells before she can stop herself.

"And it is fair to risk the lives of all the people around you?" Creepy Uncle Enchilada snaps. He calls her arrogant and gets halfway through calling her selfish before Giles sort of physically interrupts. Ms. Calendar pulls him back before he can actually pick a fight, but the point is made. On all sides.

And there's a ritual and an Orb of Thesulah (Willow writes that one down for her) and the kind of magic that makes the hair on Buffy's neck stand on end even though she's a whole room away, and then it's done. She's escorted to see Angel (he's chained up and solemn, and she almost feels shackles on her own wrists when she looks at him), and then the Kalderash clan packs up to leave. The whole thing makes her think of birds, of a scene in an old movie where thousands of birds move like they're controlled by one mind.

Spike's gone by then, after arguing some amount of money (she wasn't paying attention) from Giles for his help, and quiet descends on Sunnydale. That night's patrol is vamp-free, so she goes home early and puts a pillow over her head to drown out all the sound.

—

Buffy's at home, sleeping, so she isn't there to see a VW Bug park at the cemetery and a woman wearing a familiar kerchief walk quickly into the crypt that contains Angel.

She holds her flashlight steady in front of her until she finds Angel, still chained to the wall, and tightens her grip on the key in her pocket. It hadn't been hard to get it from Uncle Enyos before her family had left town. If anything, he had seemed pleased that she'd be watching – or rather guarding – Angelus once more. Semantics don't matter quite as much when the wrong person is chained up. Angelus was – is a sadistic killer, an animal, something that should be put down, but Angel isn't Angelus, and it isn't fair to make a man pay for a monster's crimes.

"As far as anyone knows, this never happened," she says, looking Angel in the eye as she unlocks the door to his cell. Quickly, she undoes the shackles holding him to the wall and lets him drop to the ground and get his bearings. He looks like he wants to say something to her, but before he can she throws him a pack of pig's blood (no sense in leaving him to starve) and all but runs back to her car. By sunrise, there won't be so much as a hint that either one was there.

No amount of kerchiefs and long skirts, no amount of chiding and threats, no number of home-cooked meals and gentle prodding, none of that will turn Jenny Calendar into the woman Janna Kalderash is supposed to be. (That's alright. There's a different role out there for her to play.)


	20. 1999, Start of January

For Christmas, she gets an empty crypt. It's a good thing, in the sense that Angel isn't a prisoner, but she doesn't know where he is or if he's safe. He's alive, she can be sure of that, because the Kalderash clan seethes and storms and threatens. Ms. Calendar sits there blank-faced and Giles smiles politely, promises to investigate with the full authority of the Watchers' Council, and splits his knuckles on the punching bag in the training room after they're gone.

But they're gone. They're gone and Oz graduates without much fanfare and then school's out for winter break. Not that she gets a vacation from Slayering, though, since once the Kalderash clan and Angel and Spike are out of range all the vampires come out in force again. And Giles gives everyone homework by way of the Binders of Ascension. And her mom's running her ragged with Christmas things. So really she doesn't have much time to think about Angel or souls or curses or anything like that.

It'd be nice if her dreams could be convinced of that. Every night since the Kalderash clan's departure, she's had dreams that are way more like portents. Drusilla dances through unfamiliar graveyards (not any of the ones in Sunnydale, Buffy knows those like the back of her hand), sometimes laughing, sometimes pleading, insisting she's a doll on strings. The armored woman walks along a beach, red water lapping at her feet, and says that things are out of order. Kendra braids flowers into her hair for the butterflies that won't leave her be.

"Something is coming," Kendra tells her. "Mr. Zabuto is sure of it."

"But what is it?" Buffy asks. Kendra shakes her head, and petals fall around her shoulders.

"I have no way to know. The signs are turned upside down, and all the books have their words out of order. Despite this, something is coming."

"That's not really helpful," Buffy tells her, tired. Kendra laughs. She has a nice laugh, and it crosses Buffy's mind that she hasn't exactly heard it before.

"Believe me," Kendra says. "I know."

—

Now that Buffy is home during the day instead of at school her mom starts freaking out at her about the Slayer thing all over again. At least this time Giles is all sober and not sad and can explain things to her, but that only helps a little because Buffy's mom has way more access to her than to her Watcher so Buffy's the one who has to deal with the really weird questions. (Yes mom, Angel is still a vampire. No mom, there definitely are good witches. Yes mom, werewolves are a thing. No mom, there's probably not aliens in Sunnydale. Yes, mom, )

The worst comes after Christmas, though, after Buffy's almost sure the whole thing's blown over and Willow's really stopped with the sketchy magic and Ms. Calendar's gone to check in with her family and then come back again and Faith's slept on a spare mattress on Buffy's floor and there's no way her mom has any more dumb questions to ask. It's the second night of the new semester when her mom surprises her on patrol, in the dark in the middle of the night with a thermos of hot cocoa. (Minor kudos to mom for not spilling the cocoa through the entire encounter with the freshly vamped Mr. Sanderson who mom apparently knew from the bank (and what's an IRA anyway?). Between that and punching Giles, Buffy thinks her mom maybe has some hidden depths. Then again, she crashed a patrol with hot cocoa, so maybe not.)

Buffy's barely managed to get her mom back on a moderately-lit path home when she hears her make a despair noise and rushes over in case she's been attacked again. She hasn't, though. There's not a vampire in sight, not a monster to be seen, just her mom standing at the edge of the playground with her hand clasped over her mouth and two little kids draped limply over the playground equipment.

They're so small, Buffy thinks dully. They're smaller than the Anointed One had been, and the way they're… the way they've been put, she can tell from a distance they're dead. They're so small and still, and her mom's just standing there staring and Buffy has to do something so she maneuvers her mom out of the way and calls the police and forces herself to memorize the symbol that's been carved onto the two little bodies so that she can draw it and take it to Giles.

(The police officer tells her she's kept her head very well. Buffy can't bring herself to say anything snippy in return and just asks if she can take her mom home.)

Giles and his tendency to call things that are awful fascinating get the brunt of her anger the next day. He goes very quiet when she shows him the symbol, and then suggests it's probably a cult, it's probably people and not a monster. People with souls. She's never really taken the time to think that a human person with a soul could really do this. Buffy's seen human's summon monsters and do spells and stuff but they were always like really horrified when the spells went wrong or when the demons started killing things. And she knows that there is technically a code against Slayers killing humans but whoever did this killed kids. She's going to kill them. (Giles hedges and mumbles, but Faith meets her eyes across the table and nods.)

She feels only a shade less murderous when she explains the situation to everyone at lunch. They're horrified, but it's like they don't really get it, not the way she gets it. At least Willow and Amy and Michael don't go into the whole mother earth eternal feminine good magic thing because she really can't take that right now. And then her mom shows up and she's wigging even worse than the night before, and it turns out she's called up half the town in some sort of misguided mom-effort to fix things that can't be fixed.

"There's going to be a vigil," her mom tells her proudly. "We're setting it up at city hall. The Mayor's even going to be there. Now we'll finally get some action."

That's… really not going to help.

—

It's like all of Sunnydale's turned up to the vigil, and it's also like the wigging is contagious. Willow hangs on to Buffy's arm and looks at the assembled everyone with something verging on horror.

"Maybe we can all go patrolling together later," Buffy stage-whispers. Willow smiles twitchily.

"At least your mom cares enough to be here," she answers. "Mine's probably–standing right in front of me this second. Mom?" And then Dr. Rosenberg makes her appearance. Apparently she and Buffy's mom sorta bonded over the whole anti-evil/civil action thing. Also Dr. Rosenberg still doesn't know her name, Bunny? She interrogates Giles and Ms. Calendar about witches while Willow tries to edge for the door, but there's too many people.

"Actually modern Wicca is more of an improvement and self reliance based religion rather than demonstrative. In fact…" Buffy just thinks Ms. Calendar should stop talking so loud because people are starting to look at her.

Luckily(?), the Mayor turns up to give his speech before Dr. Rosenberg can go too into "the rise of mysticism among adolescents," because wow if there's ever a topic that could make Willow, Giles, and Ms. Calendar all so many kinds of uncomfortable that's it.

(The Mayor, Buffy thinks, is good at speeches. Maybe that's why he keeps getting reelected. He's charming, in an old-fashioned, Ronald Reagan sorta way.) It's all going as well as this sort of thing can go, but then Buffy's mom takes the podium and it all goes wrong. (Though, in retrospect, it had gone wrong way before that. Her mom's speech is just the first really overt sign.)

—

It's a literal witch-hunt from that point on. Fights break out in school, on the street, in people's houses. Jonathan from Wicca Club barricades himself and a few other club members in Giles's office while what looks like the whole swim team tries to tear the door down to get to them. Principal Wood and Giles manages to send them packing, but like two hours later there's a full-on police raid on the school. They go through all of Ms. Calendar's stuff for Wicca Club, and Willow tells Buffy that they're talking about arresting her.

"Corrupting young minds, they said," Willow explains, tugging nervously at her sweater sleeves. "But, but Ms. Calendar's not all corrupt-y. They're wrong."

When they try to go through everyone's lockers, Principal Wood does the responsible adult version of throwing a fit. He talks for like a half hour about the Fourth Amendment, something called loco parents, demands warrants, threatens to call the Chief of Police, the Mayor, the Governor, lawyers, and manages to add his uncle to the list before a cop comes at him with a baton. Demon-hunting skills come in handy when fighting humans too, though, so half the school gets to see the principal fling a cop into a row of lockers and then roundhouse kick another one. Giles gets in the way with the Britishness and the stuffiness before they actually arrest him, but it's a close call.

It's way too close a call. Close calls with dead stuff is one thing, close calls where the principal almost gets arrested and there's real living people with tasers and things? That's completely different and Buffy doesn't like it.

Giles suggests Ms. Calendar go visit her family for a few days. She laughs, kind of bitterly, and says she'd rather have the inquisition.

She should have gone.

By lunch everyone is talking about how the symbol that was carved into the bodies of the little kids was found in the stuff that Ms. Calendar keeps for Wicca Club. By the end of the day everyone is saying that she got the Wicca Club to sacrifice the kids to the devil.

It would be really really helpful if Giles could find the book that shows the symbol was part of a demon possession or something. Something that has three eyes and horns and ooze. Something that she can hit and she can show the town so they'll stop going after her friends and Ms. Calendar. But Giles is being unhelpful man and telling her that the symbol keeps turning him towards Eastern European groups that practice magic. Groups like...

"It's a focusing symbol!" Ms. Calendar says later in the library. "Something for people to look at while trying to center and replenish their energies during the next Esbat ritual for Brigid's Day." She's pacing and wringing her hands. "There is no way I would ever bring any kind of dark magic into that club!"

Buffy believes her, but the real problem is no one else does. It's probably naive of her to believe that people can be convinced of it, but she does believe it, she believes it for almost a whole day, before the police take away Giles's books and someone cracks Principal Wood over the head with something so hard he has to go to the hospital. The Wicca Club sort of huddles together when school lets out, and eventually they peel off into groups to walk home, glancing over their shoulders and watching each other's backs. She has to chase people away from them anyway.

She can't be there to see them all home, of course, but she does walk Willow to her door. Dr. Rosenberg is waiting for her with a handful of Wicca Club flyers because of course she is.

"Do you need to tutor me today, Will?" she asks under her breath, but Willow shakes her head. It makes sense, on some level, because Willow really doesn't have a single magical thing left in her room, but Buffy still has to force herself off the doorstep and keeps looking back at the closed door.

(So she's no there to see Willow's confrontation with her mother, she's not there to see Willow's fingers tracing the words of spells she wouldn't recognize anyway and on her mother's couch, she's not there to see Willow raise her head defiantly and tell her mother that she is a witch, that she's got dark secrets and powers her mother couldn't even dream of.

"And I can almost see the Dreamers' City and I figured out how to hack a curse, mom! I'm, I'm taking extra-curricular lessons and I talk to strange men in motel rooms! During school hours!" Willow says, almost pleading. "And I go out after dark and I– I pledge sacrifices to the Brilliant Ones and God of Many Masks! Mr. Rayne gave me a special knife for blood rituals, and, and–"

"I don't have to listen to this," says Dr. Rosenberg wearily.

"I invoke the Gate and Key!" Willow half-yells. "Fill me with your black naughty evil!" Okay, so Mr. Rayne had been a bit vague on the really dangerous uses of chaos magic, but still, it's enough to make her mother yell at her, actually pay attention and yell at her, for the first time that she can remember since the Mr. Rogers show. And then Willow goes to her room like she's told, because there's only so much black naughty evil she's got in her.)

—

Buffy's supposed to patrol, she and Faith are both supposed to patrol, but the doom-and-despair feeling leaves them lurking at the playground where Buffy's mom… where the dead kids had been found. Faith's remarkably quiet, really, but she's still the one who breaks the heavy silence.

"We had a park like this when I was growing up," she drawls as she idly pushes an empty swing. "'Course, all you had to worry about was the drug dealers and the guy in the trench coat near the big slide jacking off. Never had to worry you were gonna be murdered." The swing creaks a little as it rocks back and forth, but the sound feels like it's coming from far away.

Buffy can't stop staring at the makeshift shrine that's been set up in the sandbox. It's covered in flowers and pictures and toys.

"It's strange…" she says hugging herself. It's colder than it should be. "People die in Sunnydale all the time. And I've never seen anything like this."

"They were kids, B. People lose their shit when it's kids." Faith shrugs as she sits down on the swing, boots digging into the wood chips. "The innocent of the innocent."

"They were so little," Buffy says, and she knows she's repeating herself but she can't help it. "They were so little, and they were out here all alone, and I'm supposed to stop things like that from happening!" Her eyes sting. Faith kicks the wood chips.

"We," she says. Buffy blinks at her. "We're supposed to, not you. You're not the only Slayer in town, remember?" That's right. There's two of them and there's still dead kids and a memorial on a playground.

"Lot of help two of us are," she mutters. Faith shrugs.

"Always figure, it'd be worse without us, right?" she says quietly. "It'd be a whole dead preschool, sobbing parents and newscasts and everything, not just two kids." And something about that sounds off.

"Parents," she murmurs. Faith takes this as reason to keep talking.

"Yeah, you know, B? There'd be loads of them doing interviews with their little sob stories about how little whosit and whatsit were just the sweetest little angels, never did a thing wrong and mommy and daddy loved 'em so much and miss them so much the book deal'd never make up for it. Maybe a lifetime movie…" Buffy can barely hear her rambling, though.

"But we never heard anything about their parents," she says slowly. Faith blinks.

"Yeah," she says after a moment, looking up at Buffy all wide-eyed and getting somewhere. "No book deal."

"No names," Buffy says. "All the vigils and things, and no one's ever said their names."

They need to get to Giles right now immediately.

—

Giles is in the library, as usual, struggling to use a computer which is very not as usual. Buffy and Faith run in in time to hear him yelling at the thing as though it could possibly understand him. Xander and Jesse are lurking behind him, trying to look like they're not laughing on the inside.

"Session interrupted? Who said you could interrupt - Stupid, useless fad - That's right! I said fad!" He sounds almost triumphant. "And I'll say it again."

"How many times have I told you Rupert, you have to talk nice to it to get it to do things," Ms. Calendar says as she walks in through one of the library's back doors. She looks like she's been put through the wringer. It's really possible they've had this conversation before. Faith has probably heard it before since she's trying not to giggle. "Okay, move over." Giles does, gladly and Ms. Calendar begins typing at a much faster pace than his hunt-and-peck. "What are we looking for?"

"The kids–" Buffy starts.

"Yeah, do they have names?" Faith interrupts, but whatever, they're on a roll.

"And their parents, is there anything on their parents? I haven't heard anything about their parents–" Ms. Calendar types faster, Buffy thinks she recognizes a search engine.

"No way they don't have parents," Faith adds. "They're all dolled up in the pictures, yeah?"

"Yeah," says Buffy firmly. "So we should, there should be something there–"

"There isn't," Ms. Calendar says and gestures to a screen that looks a little too blank for Buffy's tastes.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean something like this, is going to make the news, nightly, papers, town criers. But there's nothing from before the night Buffy found them." Ms. Calendar explains as she opens web pages. They all scream how horrible and disturbing and evil the night was, but there were no names, or ages or other pictures. And that's weird. That's candlelight-vigils-without-names and clearing-out-libraries and random-acts-of-paranoid-violence weird.

"Okay…" says Faith, raising her eyebrows.

"How far back can you search?" Giles asks, eying the computer like it may come to life and try to eat them.

"About as far back as people have been writing things down." Ms. Calendar grins. "But as much as I like to toot my own horn, I'm going to need help sifting through all of this. Where's Willow?"

"Home," says Buffy automatically. "I think Dr. Rosenberg's on all systems lockdown."

"Then we take it to her," Ms. Calendar mutters opening up what looks like an email program. A few minutes later the machine lets out a happy ping. Dr. Rosenberg must have forgotten about the dial-up connection

Between the two of them, Willow and Ms. Calendar find lots of old newspaper articles with lots of dead kids. It would be disturbing if they didn't all carry the same symbol and didn't track all the way back to 1649. At that point it stops being disturbing and starts being supernatural, which is something Buffy can totally deal with. Giles is looking like he's trying not to say the word fascinating.

Ms. Calendar opens up an IM from Willow. "There are more articles, every fifty years. I think we can officially say we're in Hellmouth territory." And then all contact with Willow cuts off. Looks like Dr. Rosenberg remember the computer after all.

Giles says, though he says it with a lot more words and syllables and in a way less to the point way that takes a tangent through fairy tales being real, that there's probably a demon that using the two dead kids as a guise to stir up paranoia and resentment and make people kill each other. Which, you know, oozes demony badness. It may not ooze, Giles isn't clear on whether it oozes, but she can definitely kill it and that's what matters. She takes a moment to be relieved about that, takes another moment to freak out at the idea that a paranoia demon's got her mom, and then Michael from Wicca Club falls in through the library door looking like something's actually tried to kill him. Which is apparently accurate. He says his dad's out for blood (in the paranoia demon witch-hunt sense, not in the vamp sense), and oh god, Willow's locked in her house.

She has to save Willow.

(Really, she deserves a gold star for trying, she tells herself later after everything's gone horribly wrong again. She tried. Not her fault the whole town was under witch-hunt whammy and Willow sort of follows any direct instruction she's given.)

So then an angry mob led by her own mother tries to burn her, Faith, Ms. Calendar, and most of the Wicca Club at the stake (on a stack of burning books, no less) because of the stupid shape-shifting witch-hunt-makey paranoia demon that's got a hold on the town. Amy turns herself into a rat to escape and leaves the rest of them stranded like some kind of jerk while Buffy tries desperately to talk sense into her mom. (But like, when does that ever work?)

"Joyce, please think about what you're doing! This is murder!" Ms. Calendar is straining against the ropes. Buffy knows that's not going to do anything, even with Slayer strength the ropes aren't budging. Faith is also yelling things but Buffy is pretty sure she's okay with not knowing what they mean.

"You all earned this," her mom says sadly. "Toying with unnatural forces… What kind of mother would I be if I didn't punish you for it?" Beside her, Dr. Rosenberg nods solemnly as the flames start to rise. The heat is painful, and Buffy's pretty sure she's resistant to pain by now. Willow's whimpering something under her breath, and Buffy can't tell if she's crying or praying or trying to do a spell.

"Willow, what–" Ms. Calendar starts to say, but the air opens in front of them, and suddenly Buffy's a lot less worried about being burned at the stake and a lot more worried about the thing that's slithering out of nowhere and sliming into the room.

Looking at it makes her head hurt and her vision go all blurry, and everyone's screaming and Willow's completely limp on her stake and Ms. Calendar's trying to yell over the cacophony and Giles and Cordelia burst through the door at about the same time Buffy's adrenaline rush surpasses her common sense and she wrenches the stake she's tied to out of the ground and tries to put it through the slimy thing. It works about as well as stabbing slime usually does, which is not at all. The paranoia spell sure seems broken, though, because there's a sudden rush to get the people who actually know how to deal with the supernatural untied. (Giles is using curse words Buffy's never heard before, and they may contain actual magic-curses. Cordelia's using a fire extinguisher, because Buffy may have sort of underestimated her common sense.)

Willow slumps where she's tied, and Buffy's not having that so as soon as she gets herself free she runs to help Willow too, portal-slime-beast be damned. She picks her up, and geez Willow either weighs next to nothing or Buffy's really used to lifting heavy things and her skin is all clammy and when she opens her eyes they're black all over, black like nothing Buffy's ever seen that isn't to do with magic, and she freezes there. Willow's eyes are all black and there's an empty, open locket hanging from her neck, and she knows exactly who gave it to her on what Giles called Mischief Night their junior year.

"Giles!" she yells. "Giles, it's the locket-thing!" (Which in retrospect didn't communicate even half of what she was thinking, but words are hard sometimes.) Giles looks up, and she pulls the chain over Willow's head and throws the thing at him. "Slime-monster came from that!" she adds.

It's sort of lucky that Giles knows what to do with that information, because Buffy sure doesn't. She settles for getting everyone out of the room while Giles re-lockets the locket monster or whatever it is one does with that. By the time they get back inside Giles is glaring at the locket, and ignoring the books that look both fire and water damaged. More importantly, though, there's no paranoia demon and no slime monster and no one's dead or on fire and you know what, that's a win for the day.

(Just as soon as they find out how to fix Amy.)


	21. 1999, Late January

It takes Ms. Calendar, half the Wicca Club, and guest appearances by Giles and a random shaman recommended by Ms. Calendar's cyber coven to de-rat Amy, but they do get it done and she doesn't look any worse for wear. So that's, you know, sort of a happy-birthday-Buffy-look-we-fixed-the-disaster deal. But only sort of, because Amy being or not being a rat is not the biggest problem in the whole apocalypse-y world.

"I have not encountered a monster contained within jewelry before," says Kendra when Buffy and Faith excitedly recount the whole Hansel and Gretel and the slime monster fiasco on the phone. "Spells sometimes are contained within such objects, but rarely creatures themselves. What did it look like?"

"Butt ugly," says Faith at the same time as Buffy says:

"Brain-melty." There's a moment of silence as Kendra parses that description. "Metaphorically, I think," Buffy adds, because Hellmouth.

"Something that is… that is the wrong shape," says Kendra slowly, and yeah, that's close too. "The girl who called it, is she alright?"

"Yeah," Buffy hedges. Willow does seem fine, aside from not remembering anything past being locked in her room by her mom. That's a couple hours of research and being burned at the stake gone, and it's worrying, but Giles says it's to be expected. Giles doesn't say a single thing else on the topic. (He's being extra weird lately, not just about that…)

"I will see what I can find," Kendra says. "It is the summoner that worries me, though. Please… Mr. Zabuto is acting like there is a secret. Take care of yourselves, both of you."

—

It's very Kendra-speak, but Giles is acting like there is a secret too. He fusses and worries and has secret phone conversations and looks like a kicked puppy when Buffy brings up her birthday party and sits Willow down for a heart-to-heart about why demon summoning is bad that ends in Willow sobbing about Mr. Rayne (again) and Giles aggressively polishing his glasses and looking like he wants to be anywhere but there.

A few days before her birthday (no surprise parties this time, no vampire boyfriends, no Ms. Calendar scheming, maybe even no disasters), Giles intercepts her between classes and asks to talk to her alone. Willow makes a noise that usually implies something carnivorous bearing down on them both.

"Neither of you is in trouble," Giles says hastily. "I– Well, it's just a conversation Buffy and I need to have. Without, er…"

"Witnesses?" Willow mumbles.

"Essentially," says Giles, running a hand through his hair. "Er, that is, no." Well, that sounds promising.

"Giles, what's actually going on?" Buffy asks, and Giles clicks his tongue in annoyance.

"A multitude of things, including you not listening when I give you instructions! Willow, go to class. Buffy, come with me. This– this specific part is by no means complicated!" And you know what? She's going to make it complicated.

"I'm walking Will to class," Buffy says, trying to look as Slayer as possible or maybe as Faith as possible or something like that. Chin out, arms folded. "And I thought I was supposed to value my education? I mean," she glares up at Giles, "I am going to college, like you wanted."

"That, er, yes." Giles takes his glasses off and just puts them in his jacket pocket. And really, what's with the sudden resurgence of tweed? He'd worked his way down to sweater-vests and sometimes even just collared shirts. "And, and that's excellent, truly, but your duties as Slayer–"

"–Are to protect people," she says firmly. "That's what we do the whole standing against the forces of darkness for, right?" And she grabs Willow's arm and half drags her the rest of the way to French. She spares Giles only half a glance over her shoulder, but he's smiling like he's proud of her. And that's weird too, at least in context.

—

She does cut French and go sit in Giles's office behind closed doors with him, though. Or she sits. He paces. And fidgets. And keeps picking things up and putting them down again.

"You wanted to talk to me?" she asks after like five minutes of this.

"You, er, your birthday is coming up," says Giles a bit lamely. "You're to be eighteen."

"Yes…?" She tries to stretch the word out as long as it can go. "And?" Giles visibly flounders. (Like there's a secret.)

"I, well, that is…" He takes off his glasses for like the fourth time and sets them on the table. "What you need to understand is that it has truly been an honor being your Watcher. I don't say such things lightly, Buffy, but you are an extraordinary young woman." There's that sad-proud look again, and a terrible thought crosses her mind.

"You're not quitting, are you?" she asks. "You're not going back to England, right? You can't!" Giles smiles, only it just makes him look more miserable.

"No, no the Council has not called me back," he says gently. "But they have come here." Okay, that's a twist. That's a twist that probably explains the great retweedifying. Well, there's only one thing she can say to that.

"Huh?" she says. Giles starts pacing again. And rambling.

"They are here to, to– you have to understand, it's a time-honored tradition– the whole matter is meant to be secret but, well, the truth is– on account of, well, the whole thing happening quite rarely– the Council's orders on the topic are absolute, and–"

"Giles!" she interrupts. He freezes. "Can you just tell me, in small words, what the hell's going on?"

"You're turning eighteen," Giles says, and suddenly he looks really tired. "When a Slayer turns eighteen, she is subject to a test carried out by the Council as a whole."

"Do I need a number two pencil for this one?" Buffy asks. "Happy birthday, have supernatural SATs minus the band-candy-ocalypse?" That makes Giles amused-smile rather than sad-smile for a moment, but just after that he's back to being morose.

"Er, not quite like that," he says. "It is … Well, it is a test of how much you have learned in your time as a Slayer, as well your ability to live by your wits."

"So… supernatural SATs," Buffy repeats, grinning. Giles doesn't grin back. "Worse than supernatural SATs?"

"Worse," he says. "The Council…" And then he trails off again. Buffy doesn't know the first thing about the Watchers' Council except that evil Mrs. Post sounded like she definitely belonged to it and they don't really keep in touch with Giles.

"I mean," she says, and it's nervous babbling now. "I did fine on the not-evil SATs, and I'm sure there's like, I mean, I don't go to class as much as I should and I did fine, and I definitely Slayer as much as I should so really, I'll ace this thing but also is there a guidebook or a practice test or something?" Giles looks pained.

"Buffy, do be serious," he says. "It's… I… In telling you this, I am technically voiding the results of the Tento di Cruciamentum–" Oh no, it's Latin-y. Latin-y means bad and probably prophecy-ful and stuff. "–but I cannot in good conscience allow you to go into it unaware." A cold fear that has nothing to do with filling in bubbles settles in the pit of her stomach.

"Which is why you haven't told me what the crusty-whatsit actually is?" she asks.

"Cruciamentum," Giles corrects automatically, then he sets his glasses back on his face and drops into formal Watcher-mode, staring at a spot on his desk. "If a Slayer reaches her eighteenth birthday, the Council sets a challenge before her to test her ability to operate alone, and without her augmented abilities. A serum is administered by her Watcher in the field to temporarily remove her powers, and then she is placed in a controlled environment with an enemy she must defeat." He sighs. "I really am very sorry."

Buffy's not really the best at processing Watcher-mode, so it takes her a moment, sitting awkwardly in Giles's office to parse the augmented abilities and the controlled environment and the ifs while he fiddles with some leather thingie.

"What the hell?" She means to yell it, but it comes out a bit choked. "What the hell, they—you're going to drug me and, and lock me up?" Giles doesn't move.

"I really am very sorry," he repeats. "If there was any other way…" Buffy slams her hands down on the desk. That's loud, even if her voice still isn't cooperating. She wants Giles to flinch, but he doesn't.

"There is! There's lots of other ways! Ways that don't, don't involve drugging me and feeding me to some kinda demon!" She takes a shaky breath, because she's not going to cry, she's not. "Giles! Giles, look at me."

"It isn't my decision," Giles says flatly. "We are merely tools of the Council." She grabs him by the shoulder on some stupid whim to make him snap out of it, and Giles plunges a needle into her arm. "I really, truly am sorry," he says, and Buffy's world goes foggy, goes blurry, and goes white.

—

She wakes up in a library chair, one of the comfier ones, with her head on a book and Xander shaking her by the shoulder.

"Hey, wakey-wakey, sleepyhead," he says. Just a dream, she thinks. Just a dream, with the Council and the test and the drugging and the…

"Giles…?" she mumbles.

"Not a Giles, a Xander," says Xander. "Xan-der. You know, dopey, recently dramatically single donut-fetcher extraordinaire? Xander."

"Yeah. Sorry." She rubs her eyes. God she's tired. "I was just… I must've been dreaming."

"Yeah," says Xander, then pulls a face. "Wait, dreaming about Giles?"

"Dreamed he stabbed me," Buffy says honestly before Xander can go off on any idea, because he's looking like he's about to board a train of thought bound somewhere gross. Instead he grins and makes some joke about late book fees, then tells her she slept right through French and is about to be late for chemistry.

She runs to class and makes it by the last bell, but for some reason she's winded. It's weird. It's been a weird sort of day.

(Cruciamentum. The word sticks in her mind because she's not really that familiar with Latin. A curious search through Giles's dictionaries tells her it it means pain or torment. Well, if she's going to dream random Latin, that sounds appropriate.)

—

She dreams she's standing on a beach, and the water's red. It's red for a reason, it has to be for a reason, but she can't think of it. Her mind feels like it's in a fog.

"That's how it always happens," says a woman's voice, cool and British. "Too many things at once." Buffy knows her, Buffy's sure she knows her.

Down the beach, Kendra and Faith are building a sandcastle. Faith's in pigtails, and without their makeup they both look so very young.

"Are you gonna storm the castle?" Faith asks. "Save the princess and the whole deal?"

"We cannot do that," Kendra says. "We are all to die." Faith pouts.

"But the princess!" she insists. "There's a story!" A butterfly lands on Kendra's head, violet and vibrant.

"The sleep eternal was foreseen, dreaming deep and dark," Kendra intones. "I do not know what it means."

"Dumbass," says Faith.

Buffy looks away, even though she wants to tell them… something. She doesn't remember what. Why can't she remember? Why can't she move?

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Willow, who seems to be playing fetch with the locket-monster. She throws it something that shines and sparkles, but each time the monster brings it back it sparkles less, and Willow sinks deeper into the sand.

"That's the problem with cause and effect," says the British woman. "It ripples. A butterfly flaps its wings…"

"Chaos theory," Buffy manages to say.

"Is it?" asks the British woman. "Not just, I think. Scales can tip one way or another, and controlled systems do not tend toward chaos."

Someone waves a chocolate bar in her face. It's clearly labeled Creepy Ethan's Cursed Candybars, and she's pretty sure she can hear the British woman groan. Giles is standing in front of her now, dressed all tweedy and earnestly offering her the chocolate.

"This is no time for a beach party, Buffy," he says. "You have a test to take! Eat up now, you have to be ready. This plan can't fail!"

Something is coming out of the water behind him, something Buffy can't focus on, but causes a wave that takes down the sandcastle and Faith starts crying like a little kid.

"For the love of the Powers," says the British woman. "What a sodding mess!"

And that's when she wakes up. (It's a really, really weird sort of… week.)

—

She really does want to write the whole thing off as weird dream nonsense, but the next morning Willow goes to fiddle with a locket that's not there, puts her hands in her pockets instead and says:

"What did Giles want to talk to you about anyway?"

"Uh," says Buffy. She can't remember it. Why can't she remember? Is she still dreaming? No, that's not right. "Slayery things." Willow's expression darkens.

"Top secret stuff, huh?" she mumbles. "I get it. We aren't important enough."

"That's not it!" Buffy insists. "It's just a stupid… Giles was just being stupid about rules and things. It's not… anything."

"Uh-huh," says Willow, and she goes to fiddle with the locket again but it's still gone, and then goes to fiddle with her hair but it's short and then folds her arms and pouts. "It's okay. Don't worry about it."

And then Giles insists she come talk to him after school again, and then she must've fallen asleep listening to him talk or something because she wakes up to a few hours later face-down in her textbooks. He's not in his office when she goes to check, and Willow and Faith half the Wicca Club are piled into Ms. Calendar's office for something to do with crystals. Whatever it is, it looks exhausting, so she walks past it and goes home.

It's not normal that she's so tired. A vamp almost gets the jump on her on the way, and it's way too close a call. She'll have to… she'll have to talk to Giles about it. Or get Faith to take more patrols. The last time she'd been this sloppy, she'd had the Hellmouth-flu and ended up in the hospital. (And that's not a thing she wants to do again, hospital-beasties or no.)

—

At least some things are normal. Like home, and her mom— her mom who has decided not to talk about the whole burning at the stake thing and instead decided to focus on happy fun birthday times. There's talk of a Thelma and Louise night and a whole day of shopping. Now that's something she can look forward to.

Also, her dad is coming to take her to an ice show. Buffy loves ice shows, she's loved them since she was a little kid— the music, the costumes, the stunts, the huge thing of cotton candy, and the stuffed animals in ice skates. Buffy is sure that if she wasn't slaying full time she would have been skating. She's pretty good too (though she has to wonder how much of that is weird Slayer powers and how much is inborn coordination). Plus she hasn't seen her dad since that summer after the Master so Buffy is ready for some normal girly-girl fun.

Fun like flowers and a cake on the table! And oooh, pressies! It doesn't count as a birthday party if it's not on her actual birthday right? So opening them now won't ruin anything. (They're proper normal girly-girl fun presents, and for a moment everything is glorious.)

Things still end up ruined, not when she opens the presents but when she opens the card from her dad.

He can't take her to the ice show. Something about his quarterly projections being more important than taking his only daughter to the ice show on her eighteenth birthday. Buffy crumples up the card as her mom offers to take her instead. It's a really nice offer but her mom really can't take time off from the gallery. Plus, it's just not the same.

Whatever. Buffy just wants a nice quiet birthday, anyway. (But being the Slayer means that she can't have a nice quiet anything.) And anyway she's getting sick so she'd probably not enjoy the ice show even if she went, so it's fine. (And she doesn't want to have the flu but she doesn't want it to be anything else, because she's been dreaming of needle-marks on her arms that heal way too fast.)

—

She shows up for another before-school Giles-talk session the next day only to find him not there and a weird leather box-thing sitting on his desk. It looks like the one from the flu-dream with the test and the Latin (and the Watchers' Council being straight-up evil and she really, really wants it not to be because if it's the same thing then she can't keep saying it was all a flu-dream) and she's nosy so she opens it up.

And it's the same one, because of course it is. (She didn't really think it wouldn't be, just like she doesn't ever really think prophecies won't go down the way they go down and just like she never really, really truly thinks Angel is going to come back and they'll live happy ever after.)

And she's standing there numbly with the syringe in her hand trying to figure out what she's supposed to do when the door opens behind her, and even with her senses all dull she recognizes Giles's footsteps.

"Buffy," he says. "Glad you could make it." And he says it like it's perfectly normal, even though it's not, it's really not.

"You," she says, and she doesn't know how to finish the sentence except maybe hitting him and she doesn't know how to do that really because she can't hit him, he's Giles.

"Yes, me," he says. "I really am terribly sorry, Buffy."

"It's for the…" (Her mind supplies the phrase 'evil SATs' but that's not what she wants to say, that's not the word, she's heard him say it and she's going to say it right.) "... Tento di Cruciamentum, isn't it?" There's the sad-proud look again, like he hasn't been drugging her and wasn't planning on locking her up, powerless and alone, with something that'll want to eat her.

"Yes." And then he smiles a little bitterly and says. "I doubt I could take today's dose from you by force, even in your present state. It takes several days for the muscle relaxants to kick in fully." She takes a half step forward, because she wants to hit or strangle or cry or do something other than just stand there numbly but then Slayer-logic, training-logic kicks in. If she gets much closer to Giles he could get the jump on her, he's had more practice after all.

"Why?" she asks quietly.

"Because there are some of the Council's orders that I must obey," Giles says. "They would do far worse—to you, to me, to both of us—were it to appear I were keeping you from the Cruciamentum." He shoots a glance at the needle in her hand. "Or preparing you for it. Or warning you of its existence. The Council… Buffy, there are far bigger things in play here than you or I."

(She thinks about bigger things and red water and Angelus and monsters in lockets and the end of the world, and she thinks about ice shows and her dad and Giles punching a vampire in the face, and she doesn't know what she's supposed to think at all.)

"And I'm supposed to just take that?" She hates that her voice breaks. She hates the Council. She thinks she may even hate Giles. "I'm supposed to just let you—let everything…" Oh god. Kendra. She's only a few months older than Kendra. Kendra is going to have to face this thing too. And Faith's just sixteen, but… "I can't let you do this," she says, because she'll cry for herself but she'll personally fight the entire Watchers' Council for Kendra and Faith and all the girls who'll come after and all the girls who came before and didn't make it. "Giles, I won't let you do this." And Giles looks her in the eye for the first time in like a week and says:

"No, you won't."

—

(Buffy doesn't see her mother sitting at the kitchen table paying bills, like she does every last Thursday of the month. She doesn't hear the sound coming from outside the house that sounds like crying. She doesn't see her mother go to the door to see what is going on and open it. She doesn't see her mother step out onto the porch to approach the figure wearing her stolen coat. Her mother reaches out to touch the curled up figure and quicker than lightning a vampire grabs her hand and drags her away. Of course Buffy isn't there to see that—she's in the library, seething in rage with a broken syringe in her hand, planning a revolt against the Council with a Watcher who has a history of that sort of thing.)

What she does see, when she gets home (with her fury cooled enough to know she has to win, for herself and for Kendra and Faith and every Slayer past and present, and with holy water and two stakes and a heavy cross and her Watcher's notebook and a dagger and a crossbow and brass knuckles that used to belong to someone called Ripper) is the door ajar and photograph of a monster holding her mother hostage. (She hates the Council, because her having a mother is outside of the rules but the monster kidnapping her mother isn't.) She stuffs the photograph in her pocket too, turns on her heel, and goes to war.

(Giles goes to war too, though she doesn't get to see it. He corners Quentin Travers over the sickbeds of two wounded would-be guards and asks, quiet and falsely calm, whether it is within the parameters of the Cruciamentum to let the Slayer's enemy roam and feed freely. They both know it isn't, that freedom has never been the Council's watchword.

"We should secure the premises," Giles says, as formal as he can muster. "Lest any civilians get caught in the crossfire of your little test here before it even starts." Travers frowns.

"The test has started," he says. "Your Slayer entered the field of play ten minutes ago."

"And the vampire?" Giles asks pointedly. Travers looks profoundly uncomfortable.)

—

Her mom's tied up in a basement, and the vampire is a madman who likes to talk and sing and killed for pleasure even when he was alive. That's… not alright, exactly, but Buffy stalks through the boarding house armed and cold and certain. It's the same kind of certain she had been when she had killed the Master, two years before, the kind that belongs to Buffy-the-Slayer not Buffy-the-girl and look at that, it's completely separate from the super-strength. That's a nice thought.

The vampire, Kralik, fights dirty, (but so does the Council, so does Giles, so does she) and she shoves her cross in his eye when he tries to pin her to a wall. He goes reeling, because it isn't enough to kill but is enough to hurt and hurt badly. He snaps her crossbow in half, but (that's fine, she's better up close anyway, and) she hits him in the fangs with all the strength she has (and brass knuckles, which help) and tells him she's not a little girl.

"Oh?" says the vampire. "Then what do you think you are?" She's bruised and drugged and bleeding a little and staring down a monster that stole her mother.

"I'm the Slayer," she says, then grins because this whole thing is a disaster and she's almost at home in it. "Ask me how!" She really should make a button. Or maybe a shirt.

Giles breaks in through a basement window and rescues her mom, and Buffy kills Kralik by tricking him into drinking a glass of holy water, and then it's smoke and flames and then it's over.

"Buffy?" her mom asks, and it's like a spell is broken because a full torture-test's worth of pain hits her full-force and she sits down. Her arms feel like lead. Lead that hurts a lot.

"We're fine now," she says, and she's not sure if the we is the three of them in the basement or her and Kendra and Faith or Sunnydale or any combination. Deep breaths. Her ribs are made of hurt too. "Giles? Is there anything else I need to kill?" Giles's expression flashes vicious for a moment.

"Not in the strictest sense," he says.

"Good. Because I'm going to sit here until I can breathe again."

—

The Watcher administering the test is a stuffy-looking older man who keeps looking at her and Giles like he expects one of them to vamp out or something. Giles calls him Travers. He calls Giles Mr. Giles and Buffy Miss Summers and offers a stilted apology for the whole mom-kidnapping.

"Apology not accepted," Buffy says coldly. "He could have killed her."

"A Cruciamentum is not, from what I have read, meant to involve civilians," Giles puts in.

"Regardless, Miss Summers has performed admirably," says Travers, who looks like he wants to talk to Giles about as much as he'd want to eat a live snake. "Congratulations, you passed."

"Neat," says Buffy. "Now get lost before I get my superpowers back."

"The matter is hardly concluded," says Travers. "Mr. Giles–" Giles makes the universal gesture of 'come at me,' which looks ridiculous coming from a middle-aged Englishman with tweeds and glasses but is sort of really appreciated. "Mr. Giles. Your actions tonight have proven cause for concern."

"Have they?" Giles asks. "I would be more concerned about your vampire containment system than about my actions."

"I believe, and the Council agrees with me, that you have gone directly against our orders, both in intervening in the test and in alerting your Slayer to its existence beforehand." Giles sticks out his chin and suddenly looks very much like bad-magic hates-the-world time-bomb Ripper.

"You know what, Quentin?" he says, almost softly. "I'd like to see you prove it." Travers drops his gaze for a moment, then recovers.

"An assessment will be made of your actions, Mr. Giles," he says. "In the context of your full record, of course. I trust the truth will out soon enough. For the present, consider yourself on probation. Any action taken against the Council, its orders, or its representatives will be strongly counted against your continued employment. Are we clear?"

"Perfectly clear," says Giles. Travers smiles in a way that doesn't reach his eyes.

"Excellent," he says. "And congratulations again, Miss Summers."

"Bite me," says Buffy. Maybe her superhearing is coming back, because she hears Travers mutter something about her being colorful as he stalks out the door. She's too exhausted to give him a real sort of colorful.

—

"Giles, what does it mean that you're on probation?" she asks the next morning, because she insists on going to school the next morning, bruised and superpower-free or not. (But first she walks her mom to a friend's house with a bottle of holy water and a cross, just in case, just to be safe. Who knows what else may know where she lives?)

"It means," says Giles (who has put his pen in his mouth four times in five minutes and has ditched both jacket and sweater-vest), "that they have no idea what to do with either of us. Excellent work, by the way."

"Are you getting fired?" she asks, because that's a genuine concern. Giles shrugs.

"Probably," he says, then reaches out to pat her on the shoulder, which is pretty much the Giles equivalent of laughing out loud and hugging her. "Either way, we'll give them hell."

"Definitely," she says, then tells the abbreviated version of what happened to Willow and then again to Xander and then four more times because people keep catching up to her halfway through the conversation and by the time they get to the library Giles is grinning all happy-proud and Willow is laughing all you-showed-em and Faith looks wide-eyed and impressed.

"Ms. C!" Faith yells, over her head, because Ms. Calendar is standing in the library with a mug of coffee in her hand. "Wait 'til you hear what the Council–" And then she stops, and then they all stop. Ms. Calendar turns toward them and sets her coffee down, but that's not how Ms. Calendar moves, not how she stands.

"Lady Slayer," says not-Ms.-Calendar in a familiar British voice. "It has been a while."


	22. 1999, Early February

"Lady Slayer. It has been a while." The not-Ms.-Calendar fixes her eyes on Buffy and smiles thinly. "I am pleased to see you are recovering."

"You," says Buffy intelligently. "Again." Beside her, Giles has gone very pale and quiet. Faith shoots Buffy a what's-the-plan look, but there's exactly no plan.

"Yes, me again," says not-Ms.-Calendar. "Unfortunately."

"What do you want?" Buffy asks, because can she even ask for Ms. Calendar back? Not-Ms.-Calendar blinks at her slowly.

"You appear to be having an apocalypse," she says. "Again. As one does."

"Oh," says Buffy. "It's not just a little apocalypse, is it? Just mildly apocalypse-y?" Not-Ms.-Calendar actually cracks a grin, which looks all kinds of weird because she doesn't smile like Ms. Calendar does, before schooling her face (or Ms. Calendar's face, really) back to careful blankness.

"Believe me, if it were I'd leave you people to it," she says. "You seem to have this sort of thing in hand, and my superiors frown upon direct intervention. However, someone holds a grudge against the Sisterhood of Jhe, or at least against that which they seek to raise from this Hellmouth." She pauses, looks them over, and adds. "In, oh, six days' time."

"And this is the extent of the advance warning we receive?" says Giles dryly. "Much appreciated, but—"

"It would have been earlier, Watcher, had you not been drugging your charge," says Not-Ms.-Calendar with an annoyed gesture. "One finds it difficult to get any coherent information through that sort of fever dream, as I am certain you are personally aware." Giles sort of wilts. Faith raises her hand, and Not-Ms.-Calendar sort of gestures at her to go ahead.

"Hi, yeah, what the hell is going on and what have you done to Ms. C?" Oh yeah. Because Faith's never met the apocalypse doom body-snatcher lady. In person, anyway.

"This is, uh," Buffy starts, then stops uncomfortably. "This has happened before, promise." She's pretty sure Not-Ms.-Calendar rolls her eyes.

"I am a servant of the Powers that Be and I'm borrowing your teacher's body because otherwise I lack a corporeal form. I will return her unharmed once the immediate threat of the world ending yet again has been dealt with. Is that explanation sufficient?"

"Uh," says Faith. "That doesn't make this any less what the hell."

"Likely not. Are Watchers the sort of things you can hit to make them start working again? I am certain there is some manner of writing regarding the Sisterhood in your books, so do stop standing around and find it."

"Hey, no hitting," Buffy says lamely. "And shouldn't you have all the information you need already? You're all… possess-y."

"Time was of the essence," the spirit answers, folding her arms. "Besides," she adds, and she sounds almost Ms. Calendar levels of snarky, "I'm certain the valued children of the Watcher's Council—"

"Found it!" Giles waves a kinda gigantic tome, then glares at the spirit in Ms. Calendar's body. "You were saying?"

"—wouldn't get lost in their own libraries," the spirit finishes, unperturbed. "Though your kind have surprised me in the past." Giles has a look on his face that suggests he'd go all Ripper-y on the spirit if she'd been possessing anyone else, and Buffy's not entirely sure but she thinks not-Ms.-Calendar looks downright smug.

"So uh," says Willow. "How 'bout that apocalypse we're having?"

—

Apocalypse-watch while your muscle relaxants are wearing off is not fun. Not that apocalypse-watch is fun normally (no matter how many times in a sentence Giles uses the word fascinating she's not going to agree with him) but it's worse when her ability to pick things up fluctuates wildly and your super-senses are so wobbly that you get startled by normal things like Xander walking in.

Apocalypse-watch while your muscle relaxants are wearing off featuring a weird herald-spirit-servant of whosit-thing possessing your teacher and pretty much talking trash every time she opens her mouth? Yeah. This is not going down in history as Buffy's best Friday ever.

(The phone call with Kendra about the Cruciamentum doesn't exactly make it better. Kendra goes all quiet and says it is a reasonable test if the Council says it is, and Faith grabs the phone and yells into it that Council is bullshit.

"We should—should do something!" says Faith. She sounds almost scared.

"There is nothing to do about it," Kendra says. "What is coming will come."

"And we'll fight it," Buffy tells them. "That's what we do. Kendra, promise me you'll fight it."

"I have to go now," says Kendra, and hangs up the phone.

That's a no. Buffy isn't sure what kind of Watcher Mr. Zabuto is to Kendra but no one should be able to rationalize drugging someone against their will and throwing them into a pit with a vampire.)

—

The weekend doesn't exactly help, not in the least because Buffy actually literally physically runs into a member of the Sisterhood of Cough-noise, and those things are tougher than they look. Giles of course forgot to tell her that these bird people ate the flesh of their victims. Lots of bones, lots of gross. But there's a lot Giles isn't telling her so why not add this to the list.

She kicks the bird-demon's ass, because yay for Slayer-powers coming back, but a) it's a tough fight and b) it turns out there's at least one whole nest of them. And that, obviously, is a mess and a half (Willow breaks out the magic, Xander almost gets eaten, spirit-lady tries to use Giles as bait…) but hey, whatever, what matters is that they kill the things.

"Are they actually sister sisters or are they like, demon nuns?" Buffy asks afterwards, because while it's not the most important question it's the first one she can think of.

"I, er, think it is a metaphorical sisterhood, yes," says Giles.

"Demon bird nuns," says Xander. "Now we've seen it all." (He is wrong. They have not seen it all, not by a long shot.)

—

On Monday they're in deep research mode again, trying to figure out what can kill the demon bird nuns effectively enough to stop them, y'know, apocalypsing all over the place. Xander manages to get into a fight with one of Sunnydale's not-supernatural problems, Jesse jumps to his defense, and there's almost an actual ridiculous testosterone-fueled fistfight on school grounds before Principal Wood swoops in and makes with the adult.

"You normally keep your friends in better check than that," he says, once Jack O'Toole is in forever detention and Xander and Jesse have been dumped in the library for safekeeping.

"Yeah, sorry," says Buffy. "The world's sort of ending again."

"Again?" says Principal Wood. "Never a dull moment. Can I help?"

"Get a sub that's not Willow for Ms. Calendar's classes?" Buffy suggests. "She's all possessed again. Ms. Calendar. Not Willow. I don't think Willow's been possessed except a little bit that time with Moloch the Corruptor."

"Oh," says Principal Wood, then throws up his hands. "Yes, alright. I'll say just say she called in sick then."

—

Not-Ms.-Calendar is surprisingly not very helpful when it comes to research time. She's better at snarking at Giles and discovering donuts for the first time. Possessy spirit lady apparently likes the powdered ones. This of course results in her getting powder everywhere and now Buffy has no powdered donuts. Sprinkles are just as good she guesses.

Giles is doing a lot more pacing that normal. At least he hadn't seen the powdered donut explosion. Buffy thinks that would probably be a better reaction than when Xander accidentally got pizza sauce on the Mo-something compendium or whatever. But no, he's just pacing and talking.

"All we know is that the fate of the entire world rests on the — did you eat all the jellies?"

Buffy looks at the boxes of donuts Xander had brought. No jellies left. "Did you want a jelly?"

"I always have a jelly. I'm always the one that says 'Let's have a jelly in the mix.'" He does always say that. And it's always weird and really Britishy.

"We're sorry. Buffy had three!" Buffy glares at Willow as Giles tries to do the look that is half "I'm disappointed in you" and half puppy dog eyes. So what, she's a growing Slayer and growing Slayers need their sugar. The minute Giles buries his nose back in the book Buffy glares at Willow harder.

Friendship is dead.

—

Worse than just friendship being dead is the part where Buffy's pretty sure they're all gonna be dead. The Sisterhood of Cough-noise, according to Giles, serve an ancient demon (he goes off on a bit of tangent about different varieties of Old Ones here, probably gleaned from the Binders of Ascension) that's been put in a cursed sleep deep underground. If they do open the Hellmouth, they presumably will be able to reach it and wake it up.

"And cue all the bad?"

"Just a specific subsection of the bad," the spirit puts in calmly. "If it were all the bad there would be a good chance of it putting itself out of its own misery, though it would be likely to take the world along with it. This would just be Yba'Surg wreaking havoc, to the benefit of its worshippers."

"Yes, thank you," says Giles, sounding a bit affronted. Maybe giving the apocalypse talks makes him feel better about apocalypse-y things? "As, as we obviously seek to prevent the reawakening of Yi–er–Ib—of any such creature, I've been looking for past attempts at revival—one presumes they have all been, er, unsuccessful."

"As we have not been fed upon, yes," says the spirit. Giles rolls his eyes. "And? Have you found anything?"

"Of course. Our records are detailed, you know." Giles is going from apocalypse-worry to who-got-cheeto-on-the-books which is good for him but isn't making Buffy any less freaked. Willow's about to pick a hole in her sweater, so Buffy swats at her hands.

"Your records or your Council's records?" asks the spirit, snarky.

"Mine," Giles snaps. "Now see here—"

"Giles!" Buffy interrupts. "How? How do we stop them?" All the librarian snippiness drains from Giles's face in an instant. Willow makes a quiet despair noise, and Faith, who's been mostly calm, glances over at Buffy in an obvious but sort of pointless plea for help.

"That, er…well…" Oh, whatever it is is bad. Cruciamentum-bad.

"Giles?"

"It… In the prior instances of the defeat of the Sisterhood of Jhe, it took a–a sacrifice. A Champion's sacrifice."

"A what now?" asks Faith, as Buffy's blood goes cold. She thinks of Angel, of a Champion that could release Acathla and send the whole world to hell, of Drusilla singing in a crypt and the last time the spirit had stolen Ms. Calendar's body. Had that called for a sacrificed Champion too?

"One, er, one chosen for a higher purpose," Giles recites. "A warrior."

"Like us," says Buffy. Chosen to die for a purpose. The spirit folds her arms.

"Like us," she agrees quietly, and for a moment Buffy thinks she looks sad, but she blinks and the spirit's blank-faced again.

"I… yes," says Giles, running a distracted hand through his hair. "Like you. Which is why we won't let that happen. There's–there has to be another way." He turns to glare, accusing, at the spirit. "You wouldn't be here if there wasn't another way."

"I am merely a tool," says the spirit. "I carry out the will of the Powers. If you want to break with what is written, sorcerer, that is on you."

"It's on all of us," says Buffy. "We always defy prophecy...right?" She wishes that sounded more convincing.

—

"If one of us is gonna die, who d'you think it'll be?" Faith asks. It's Monday night and they're looking for a relic Giles thinks will help that may or may not be in a vamp-infested crypt. (What is it with these people and crypts? When Buffy dies, she's asking to be cremated. Or made into a diamond. Cordelia says you can do that.)

"I've already died," Buffy points out wearily. "Could do it twice. I've had practice." Faith snorts.

"If I die, it'll call up another girl, right? Another Slayer?" she asks. Buffy nods. That sounds right. It had been her and then Kendra and then Faith.

"You won't die," she promises. "We'll have a third option. You won't die."

"Yeah," says Faith, but she won't look Buffy in the eyes. "B?"

"What?"

"Be nice to her, okay? The next kid they call."

"You're not gonna die." Maybe if she says it loud enough something out there will write it down. Prophecy-like. "I promise, you're not gonna die and we're going to kick the Skeevy Sisters back where they came from."

"Sure, yeah," says Faith. "You'll kick their asses." But she looks distracted the rest of the time they're looking. Buffy gets it. She used to think about the person who would replace her when the time came. Would she be tall, short, blonde, brunette, who would her Watcher be, would she feel the same way about the calling that Buffy did? It was probably something every Slayer did, in the face of prophesied death, so she lets Faith stew in her thoughts. (Faith's sixteen, Buffy thinks, the same age she was when she was supposed to die, the same age Chuxi'd been when she'd been cursed. How many sixteen-year-olds face prophesied death so that the world can keep turning? She's eighteen and the thought makes her stomach turn.)

—

Plus one artifact of power (Buffy really can't pronounce it, but it's all shiny and Giles-approved), plus three very old books (that Buffy's not allowed to touch), plus six blessed swords (also shiny, these are definitely things-for-Buffy), minus a Xander and a Jesse (sitting ducks without any supernatural powers, so Buffy talked them into sitting-duck-out because they're better off pouty than dead), plus a lot of candles and Giles chanting in Latin (it's something protect-y, an invocation of the elements, and wow she's getting better at the Latin) and minus another memberhood of the Skeevy Sisterhood later, they're as apocalypse-ready as they'll ever be.

"No one's gonna die," Buffy says like it's a mantra.

"That's the spirit, Lady Slayer," says Apocalypse-Spirit-Lady calmly. Faith looks sideways at them both like she doesn't believe it, and then the ground and the library floor splits open in front of them.

"Fuck me sideways," says Faith. She's really, really got a point.

"Everyone steady," says Giles, sounding all Watcher-man. "They should be coming this way in three—" The ground shakes.

"Get ready," says the spirit. She's grinning. Ms. Calendar wouldn't grin at danger like that, but the spirit looks almost like she's having a good time. Not like she can die again, Buffy supposes. It'd be Ms. Calendar's body that dies. Which would be bad too.

"Ready," Buffy echoes, squaring her shoulders. God, she wishes Angel were there. (Angel is chasing ghosts through South America with Spike riding shotgun, chasing the rumor that Darla is alive, but Buffy has no way to know that. He's stopped writing.)

"Two," says Giles. Willow's hair fluffs up as she starts reading a spell from a heavy grimoire. It's ridiculous, she looks all static-y rather than powerful, and if it wasn't a scary situation it would be funny.

"B–" Faith starts.

"One," says Giles, and the Skeevy Sisterhood breaks through the windows right on cue.

—

After that it's fighting. Buffy's used to fighting, if not totally used to the heart-in-your-throat, do-or-everyone-dies kind of fighting. (She'll get used to it. That's a matter of experience, not ability, a matter of apocalypses survived and prophecies defied and if anyone's built for those it's girls who keep walking after they're fated to die.) The actual battle is an adrenaline-fueled blur, practiced katas melding into a furious dance (because it's her school, her library, her friends, her town, and just because they're not her blood doesn't mean she won't tear the world to pieces for them).

She remembers pieces later: Faith with her hair flying, lunging over the opening Hellmouth, Willow on a table, lit up all wrong in a way that made her shadow look technicolor, the spirit in Ms. Calendar's body wielding a sword with the sort of precision that spoke to years of practice, the last member of the Sisterhood of Jhe falling, falling falling deep into the broken open Hellmouth—

"No, don't open!" Willow yells from her perch, but it's much too late. There's something rising from the Hellmouth itself, something tentacled and way, way larger than Buffy remembers it being—

"Oh," says Giles, in an entirely too academic way. "It grew." And then it tentacles Willow off the table.

—

They do kill the Hellmouth-beast dead, eventually, and no one gets sacrificed. Faith gets a bit mauled, and the thing rises the equivalent of head-and-shoulders out of the Hellmouth even with two Slayers and whatever the spirit is chopping at it, and it keeps hitting Willow so she can't finish a spell, and then Giles comes absolutely out of nowhere yelling something way more complicated than Latin and brandishing a sword that's a lot on fire. He skewers the Hellmouth-beast to no apparent effect and gets thrown literally through a table, but that's apparently step something-out-of-something of the spell because he gets up pretty calm-like and continues with the chanting which lights the whole tentacle monster on fire.

So that's cool. They still hack it to itty bitty tentacle-y bits before the ritual or whatever runs out of gas and the Hellmouth closes back up with one final awful earthquake, and then they're standing there in the trashed library with all the candles (burned out and squished) and the broken table and a lot of weapons and shredded monster. Willow makes a quiet noise and sits down.

"Do we really have to go to school tomorrow?" Faith asks. She's covered in blood and slime and her lipstick's smeared down the side of her face. It looks really gross.

"Oh god," says Buffy. "Tomorrow's still Tuesday." And she can't call in apocalypse-brain for a chem test, can she? She can't, because no one can know. They'd be so scared if they really knew. (Or maybe less scared than she thinks, because there are guardians in the gate no matter what bad times may come.)

"Just another day," says the spirit, but she's smiling. "I knew you'd be reliable." And this time she drops Ms. Calendar's unconscious body in a chair rather than face-down in the water, so like progress.

God, how is it only a Tuesday?

—

"I honestly can't believe I missed it all." Ms. Calendar says, the next day when it's sunny and the world's still turning and chem tests and cheer routines and people's sketchy exes are still a thing. She's got dark circles under her eyes and looks pretty bruised up. Giles puts an arm around her. His other one is in a sling, at some point he'd dislocated his shoulder (maybe with the fire-sword?). Buffy is just too tired to comment.

"You didn't miss much," says Willow, in a very Willow attempt to be probably comforting. Faith throws a bunched up napkin at her head.

"The Hellmouth opened!" she says in a voice that is probably a little too loud. "We looked evil in the face and survived!"

"That's Monday," says Buffy. Xander and Jesse wander over, looking like people who did not spend the previous night fighting evil tentacles, and the conversation drifts back to mundane. Just Monday. The world keeps turning.


	23. 1999, February

Nothing happens without context, not even the little things. Let's take a step back to three hours earlier. Buffy's asleep, of course, because slightly-late mornings are blessing for a Slayer, and for once she's not dreaming anything prophetic. She's dreaming of summertime and sand, and in the dream she dives deep into salty blue water and is relieved that it's exactly like water is supposed to be. Little fish dart about below her, shimmery and bright, and she's not afraid of drowning.

(It's not in any way her fault that she's unaware of what's going on across town. She's just a person, just a girl, and it would be a cruel fate indeed that would rob her of dreams just to make her solve other people's problems. Nevertheless, across town another girl her age is listening to a voicemail left at an ungodly hour of the morning, feeling to numb to even shake.

"Hey Marcie, it's Jesse," says the voice on the line. "I just...wanted to say that…you know you're awesome right? Like the best girlfriend ever. Totally awesome and...really pretty. Like the prettiest girl in school. And really really really smart. And so much fun. But...I mean we're graduating soon so…. I think we should break up. But you're still really awesome and totally smart and funny and...I mean high school stuff never lasts right? You're gonna go somewhere else, I'm gonna go somewhere else...and that somewhere else is the army. I'm going to the army. Like the minute we graduate I'm headed to basic." He pauses again. "I haven't told anyone else that, you know. It's sort of funny. Listen, I don't mean to… I really do think you're great, Marcie, but you get it, right? I know you get it. We're just going different places now. Yeah. Okay. I'll… I guess I'll see you."

And there's no one there to see her, of course, because when she isn't Jesse's girl she isn't anyone, she may as well not be there at all, and it's February 12th and she thinks she may die. No, that's not right, not die. Her hands ball into fists on her lap and she takes a shaky breath and thinks of blood and vengeance.)

So Buffy's running late to school that day, and she doesn't see anything weird happening. She's mostly focused on running while eating a breakfast burrito and thinking about how the heck she could possibly fight an entire politician who wants to turn into an entire Old One and why would anyone even do that, you know? And Willow thinks that and Old One would have cool powers but that's just a Willow thing to think and if the pictures Buffy's seen in Giles's books and the Binders of Ascension are anything to go by any cool powers would be mitigated by the abominable monster form thing. Like, none of them have hands!

("I don't want luck, you know. I just… I just really wish—" Marcie begins, then pauses. The girl she's talking to gestures for her to go ahead.

"Get it out of your system, you'll feel better," she says. "I promise."

"It's not even just him," Marcie says. "It's Jesse but it's all his stupid friends too. I wish—I wish they knew what real loneliness felt like!" The other girl smiles, and her smile is too wide and her face goes all strange but Marcie is too upset to pay it any real attention.

"Wish granted.")

It seems completely normal, for a little while—Buffy's just glad when she manages to duck around Principal Wood and avoid a lecture about Not Ignoring Your Academic Responsibilities Buffy, You Have A Unique Opportunity and then she's glad again when no one stares at her for vaulting a desk to get to her desk in English class, and then she's glad a third time because ha, looks like Xander's even later than she is—

And then she's marked absent even though she pretty much yells and waves her hands in the air. So that's weird.

"Maybe she's skipping school again," Nancy mutters darkly. "She's that type."

"Oh, shut up," Buffy tells her, but it's really obvious no one hears her. So she yells in Nancy's ear, just to confirm it, and marks the whole thing down as Hellmouthy-weirdness. Whatever's behind it, she has to talk to Willow. And Giles. And probably find Xander, who's still not in class? At least no one's going to notice if she just like, leaves, so she does.

Over the next two hours she makes several discoveries. First: Xander, Willow, and even Jesse are nowhere to be found. Second: She still has to open doors to go into rooms, and absolutely no one finds random doors opening to be weird. Third: She's really good at aiming erasers at people's heads, and she's probably way too immature for this whole almost-graduated thing. Fourth: It is entirely possible to make Faith punch through a fire extinguisher while invisible and un-hear-able, oops. Fifth: Giles sort of doesn't notice she's gone at all. That last one she figures out once she's invisible'd her way to the library, only to hear him deep in conversation with Ms. Calendar.

"He's getting to you. Wesley." That's definitely Ms. Calendar, Buffy thinks, as she lurks invisibly by the office door. She and Giles must be in his office. And since there's talking there probably isn't smoochies. Good, today is weird enough without any of...that.

"Is it that obvious?" Giles answers. Buffy peeks in the door to see Giles sitting at his desk chair with his glasses off. He's rubbing his temples. He looks rumpled, and tired. Rumpled and tired is something Buffy has never seen on Giles. Ms. Calendar is leaning against the wall, hands clasping a cup of coffee. Buffy wonders how much of the older woman's blood is made up of caffeine. She hangs in the door and waits for them to notice her.

"I'm not overly fond of the way he's treating you either." Giles is sitting up with his glasses back on. Yeah they're definitely talking about Wesley. The little worm is the only person Buffy knows who can be pompous and snippy in the same breath. And then accuse other people of being that.

"Meh, I can take him. Besides Faith is about ready to tie weights to his feet and dump him off the docks." Ms. Calendar smirks, taking a sip of coffee. That's definitely true. Faith hates the new Watcher way, way more than even Buffy does. It's like she's got a personal bone to pick, and like, maybe she does, who knows what goes on in Faith's head besides not-strategy and kinda weird fashion choices. But since they both listen to Giles they both have to do what Wesley says. Giles sits on the little couch, takes his glasses back off and begins rubbing his forehead again. He looks so...old. It's weird and uncomfortable and Buffy almost wonders if she should even be here for this but whatever, she's already lurking so may as well stay. Ms. Calendar puts down her cup of coffee and walks over to Giles.

"What can I do to make this at least a little ok?" she asks gently, sitting down next to him and taking his hand. Yeah, nope, lurking may not be a good idea, Buffy thinks, because it looks like Giles might cry. Or kiss Ms. Calendar. Either way, not something she wants to see. Buffy clears her throat in the way she's seen a lot of adults do. Nobody hears her, of course, but it was worth the try. Giles just shrugs, and Ms. Calendar tries again. "Look, if it'll make things a little easier...maybe Faith could...have the apartment to herself?" Ms. Calendar chews on her lip and looks like she'd rather be somewhere else. Buffy can so relate.

"Then where would you go?" Giles asks, alarmed. Buffy… well, she wouldn't say she perks up, exactly, but she leans awkwardly through the door to hear better. Is Ms. Calendar leaving? Is her family sending her after Angel again? Would that mean Angel would come back or…? But no, Ms. Calendar apparently has something else in mind.

"I was maybe thinking I could...move in with you?" Oh wow… Yep, this is so very much not a conversation Buffy should be there for, invisible or not. She tries the throat-clearing again and leans on the door really hard but they're still ignoring her.

"Oh," says Giles. For a guy who talks so so so much Giles goes really really silent. But at least he looks less old now. Now… flabbergasted is sort of the word. Ms. Calendar fidgets.

"It's just a thought. I mean I'm spending more and more nights a week there than at my place—" Say what now? "—and half my stuff is already there. Plus maybe it could get the Council off your back a little." Big talk for the woman who broke Giles's heart like, last year. Buffy kicks at the open door, to exactly no response even though it bounces off the wall and makes noise. Giles is still being really quiet.

"I see," he says quietly. Ms. Calendar seems to maybe catch on to the seriously-what-the-hell of the situation because she starts to backpedal really bad.

"Look if you don't want to, we can find another solution, maybe we could ask the council for a stipend so Faith can get her own place, or she could just stay with me, messing with Wesley is always fun." Honestly that may have just set the new record in rambling, but she stops when Giles sort of quiet-laughs. It's not an upset quiet-laugh either.

"I just never thought...this step forward would be prompted by the Council," he says, rubbing the bridge of his nose—but the glasses are still on. That probably means something, right? It's Ms. Calendar's turn to go all quiet and sorta starry-eyed.

"You mean you were planning on asking me eventually?" Okay this is heading into smoochie territory, and Buffy seriously can't handle more of that. Time for desperate measures. Picking up a small axe that Giles has just sitting on a pile of papers (and he gets on her case about weapons maintenance? Come on, Giles!) she chucks it at the wall over their head. Bullseye. They both jump and stare at the wall. Finally! Attention!

"Rupert, I think you have a ghost." Ms. Calendar finally says with a smile. "Maybe your predecessor?" Argh!

"My immediate predecessor retired to Florida," says Giles mildly, and Ms. Calendar says something about Florida that Buffy really doesn't care about, and then throwing things has exactly no effect so she tries to steal Giles's stupid crystal ball paperweight and he just like snatches it out of her hands and says "no" like he's talking to a little kid or a dog or something and honestly she's just done.

She'll figure this invisible thing out on her own.

Only when she invisible-angry-marches out of the stupid library (Giles is saying something about keeping his head while Ms. Calendar sarcasms at him) she collides head-on with something else invisible and they both(?) go down like a sack of bricks, which is to say heavily and really clumsily.

"Ow!" Buffy whines. "Who's that?" Okay, totally pointless. But! More importantly, at least one other invisible person, which would suggest that she's not being like, personally targeted by some kind of invisibleifying demon-thing. She cautiously puts out a hand until she hits something invisible but physically there. It feels like old leather and something weirdly electric, but before she can really process that a hand grabs her wrist drags her into first one classroom (class going on, no one looks up) then another (study hall for freshmen, loud) and finally a third which is empty (Ms. Calendar's natch, because she's planning a lovey-dovey future with Giles in the library, ugh).

"Okay, what do you want?" Buffy asks. The other invisible person tugs at her, pulling her toward the row of computers and taps at one until it turns on. "Wait," says Buffy, who is really not good at the no-one-can-hear-her thing. "Willow?" There's only rapid typing in reply.

 _I'm sorry to do this!_ , says the text running across the screen. _I don't think we can communicate out loud right now? But but we're both invisible and I'm Willow Rosenberg I'm a senior who're you?_ Oh. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

 _Will, it's me_ , she types back, albeit a lot more slowly because computers? Not really her thing. _It's Buffy_

So invisi-Willow tacklehugs her and they take down like three chairs and one of Ms. Calendar's crystally doodads but whatever.

Over the next five minutes they manage to compare stories: Willow was just fine getting to school, and she'd been talking to Xander about how Jesse was being super weird and then she'd turned around and Xander'd been gone.

 _Invisibled too?_ Buffy wrote. There was a moment of silence where she guessed Willow was nodding intensely.

 _Sorry must have. And I couldn't find you I was looking for you and if Xander and Jesse are magicked too ? what happened? ? ?_

 _Hellmouth_ , Buffy writes back. _Something Hellmouthy. We need to find/slay/fix._

 _Monster? Spell?_ Willow types. _Research time?_ But they wouldn't know where to start. Whatever it is…

 _Something triggered it. Summoned it? We need to see who it affected._ And look at that, she can Giles with the best of them. Willow bounces in place and and the computer mouse bounces with her.

Ms. Calendar is so wrong. Researching on the computer is just as long and slow as using the books. They have tons of demons that can turn themselves invisible, and spells that can turn the caster invisible but nothing about turning someone else invisible! Or multiple someone elses. Someones else? Anyway, the internet is a bust on invisibilification. What it's not a bust on is school attendance records, apparently, if you're Willow and have no qualms about technically internet crime.

 _Xander and Jesse are both out!_ Willow types. _Everyone else called in but they're and we're unaccounted for_

 _So fine. Something we've got in common_ , Buffy writes back.

Buffy totally forgot it was a Wicca Club day. But as soon as the last bell rings people start filing into Ms. Calendar's classroom and start moving desks around. Buffy recognizes most of them, Amy, Michael, that short kid, Tucker's brother who tried summoning those demons at the public pool, and some other kids who Buffy knows by face but not by name.

They start pulling homework-looking papers and crystals and things (that's a flute, Wells Jr. has a flute, that's just weird) out of their bags, chatting about random stuff. It's not the sort of conversation she'd pay attention to normally, so it sort of washes over her now too. Faith's not showing up, according to Amy, because she's got "detectiving" to do, and seriously even though she's probably barking up all kinds of the wrong tree Buffy's really happy to hear that. Faith doing Faith things. Or Slayer things. (And like, there's plenty of overlap there.)

So they sit and they wait and they watch and they listen but no one's saying anything about invisible-making spells. It seems like the topic of choice is luck charms, actually, and the making and blessing thereof. It all goes sort of over Buffy's head, but she does grasp that it's actually sort of tough.

"It's a matter of the correct invocation for the process," says Amy firmly. "For what you want the luck for. Lucky in love, lucky on a test, that sort of thing."

"But there's gotta be a, a, a general version, right?" says the short kid, who's named something like James or John and ugh he's in like four of Buffy's classes, she kinda feels bad not knowing but priorities, you know?

"Like a 'make your life suck less' spell?" a freshman girl asks, and the short kid nods. Wells Jr. (Anthony? Dang it, Ms. Calendar knows his name…) looks thoughtful.

"It'd be big, though, right?" he says slowly. Amy nods.

"Way too big for any of you," she says in kind of a snobby voice. "The sort of power you'd have to call on to change who you are on that level would—"

"Dabbling in power well beyond the mortal ken to break through the limitations set by a cruel and arbitrary world—" Wells Jr. intones. Literally everyone rolls their eyes, definitely including Buffy and probably including Willow, who lobs a pencil at Wells Jr.'s head (and misses).

So that's a good moment for Ms. Calendar to turn up, followed shortly by Marcie and some girl Buffy doesn't know.

"Sorry. Sorry I'm late." Ms. Calendar says stepping around various students and heading to the board. She's erasing various bits of computer code and tech lingo and drawing various crystals and things. They aren't very good drawings so she starts labeling stuff. Buffy catches names like rose quartz and silver and tin. But also things like acorns and brooms and salt. As she starts working on the acorn (that is the biggest thing on the board) she starts talking about charms and how putting all stuff in a bag, with the right chants and willpower, gave the person holding the bag power. Buffy wonders if it would help her on patrol.

Marcie's new friend says her name is Anya and she's a transfer student. She's pretty, in a sorta pointy-looking way and seems a bit less than pleased at having Marcie glommed onto her. She can, though, follow the Wicca Club's rambling conversation without much trouble (it's clear from her occasional interruptions) and really? Slayer instincts have something to say about mysterious strangers Buffy's never seen before appearing randomly and having clear knowledge of magic directly after something weird-magic-y's happened, and they're saying stabby.

"I'm just glad I don't have to see them," says Marcie quietly while Ms. Calendar is trying to convince a group of the younger kids that luck spells probably won't help them on a multiple choice test as much as studying would. New girl, Anya, smiles, but her smile's a bit off. Just a bit, just a little, a similar way to when she sees a crowded room and knows there's a vampire in there somewhere, like whens she knows something's just around a corner. New girl's not a witch, she thinks, it's not the something-wrong that was with Willow, it's a monster-wrongness. (And she's sitting in Ms. Calendar's classroom smiling and Buffy can't even tell anyone.)

"Of course," says Anya. "It's better that way. You won't have to see them at all." Marcie sniffles and leans against the girl's shoulder.

"Won't I? I can't hide forever, can I?"

"You don't have to," says Anya with a tone like she's doing math. "That's the thing about wishes. When they come true, they come true."

"You two okay back there?" Ms. Calendar asks, looking over at them. Anya's face doesn't lose its bland smile.

"Yes," she says. "Everything's fine."

"Sorry," says Marcie, fiddling with the green crystal necklace she's wearing. Anya's expression flickers.

"Why?" she asks. "It's all his fault, not yours."

"Bad breakup?" Ms. Calendar looks sympathetic. Marcie clenches her fists on her knees.

"It's all over now," she says, then looks over at Anya for confirmation.

"Oh yeah," says Anya, and there's an expression about smiling like a cat that drank cream? Or maybe ate a bird? That's the face she's making. "All over."

Ms. Calendar grabs a chair and looks like she's going to settle in for a long gabfest but then Wells Jr. starts talking really loudly again. Somebody's touching his magic flute.

"Hey, give that back! Give it!" Wells Jr. wails. One of the guys (she thinks he's one of the ones that hang around Ms. Calendar's computer classes, maybe he had a thing for magic?) had grabbed the flute-thing and was examining it. "It's not a toy! It's how I connect to the great ethers of the beyond! Transcending the bonds of—give it!" By now this has gotten the entire club staring at him as he snatches the instrument back and cradles it like it's a small animal and not, you know, a lame flute-thing of etherness.

"Ms. Calendar! They keep touching my flute!" he whines. Oh god, is Wells Jr. an actual child? "They aren't respecting my personal property or space!" He's really getting worked up, which comes with a side of wow that's high-pitched. "An-and I know more magic than any of these guys! So punish him? Please?"

Ms. Calendar has forgotten the chair in front of Marcie and Anya, and is now looking at Wells Jr. with that same look that Giles sometimes gives Xander when he brings the snacks that leave stains to the all night research sessions.

"Fitz, I can't believe I'm saying this but don't take stuff without asking. You know Andrew—" That was his name! "—no one is forcing you to be here. If you don't feel you're getting anything useful from this, you can leave." Buffy thinks Ms. Calendar looks like she's trying not to hope he would do just that. Instead Andrew gives her a wide-eyed look.

"Why would I leave?"

The internet fails them on the invisibility-inducing breakup-beasties that look like teenage girls front, shockingly enough, so Willow leaves a typed note on Ms. Calendar's computer explaining what they think happened and not to trust Anya with her monster-cat smile and make for the library again. (Giles can't see them, but it doesn't matter—Buffy's done plans on her own before, and sometimes they even work.)

It's pitch dark out before they find anything, but score one for the musty old books and score zero for Ms. Calendar's computer lab, because a book that's literally bigger than most backpacks contains an entire chapter on vengeance demons. The information's spotty, as if it's been put together from a lot of different sources, but it's all "powers of the wish" this and "wreaking vengeance upon mortals" that and there's an interesting picture of a monster-looking woman with a really familiar pendant around neck.

"Will! Look!" Okay, she's just yelling to fill the silence right now. More effectively, she grabs Willow by the arm and yanks her toward the book (and away from her weird Latin-y stuff, which Buffy thinks is more luck spells than invisibility-problem-solving, come on, Willow, priorities). Willow is presumably just as hyped as she is, because Buff gets headbutted in the face in all the excitement.

The demon is named Anyanka, which sounds a lot like Anya, and the book calls her the patron of scorned women. It also has a lot to say about Anyanka's pretty necklace, which sure looks like the one Marcie's wearing—more and more like it the more Buffy stares at the book.

 _That's her power center. Like her chakra_ , Willow scribbles in a notebook. Buffy plucks the notebook and Willow's stupid distinctive gel pen from the air to write back.

But the other question on Buffy's mind is, why is Anyanka hanging around Marcie? Marcie is… Buffy doesn't actually know what's going on with Marcie. She knows that she's in the band and...was dating Jesse. But probably not so much anymore, if the bit about the bad breakup is to be believed... Does that make her scorned enough? Because, like, it's Jesse of all people. He's sort of lame and has all the wrong opinions on comic books and just because Willow says he's growing into his ears doesn't mean he doesn't look sort of like an angry ferret. Could anyone really be scorned over that?

But nobody but her really likes Angel and Buffy still misses him. Still rereads his letters, still dreams about him. That's what love's like, maybe. It makes your brain do the wacky. She thinks about that as she's slamming Marcie up against a locker while Willow holds up a sign with _HOW DO WE STOP THE SPELL?_

"I don't know what the spell is!" Marcie wails. "I don't—I don't know!" Willow boffs her with the sign, to no great effect. "I swear! I don't even know who you people are!"

Oh. So that's kinda a problem. And making too much noise of the slamming into lockers variety could bring the kind of attention Buffy doesn't want. Like the demon Anyanka. She needs an idea, only she can't talk and she's all out of smart ideas—

"Marcie?" And that's one problem that could probably not be there. Anya (no, not Anya, Anyanka—Anyanka the patron demon of scorned women, and how did Buffy not see that one coming?) is marching purposefully down the hall, and oh yeah, all she can see is Marcie hovering a foot off the ground getting whacked on the head with a rolled up poster board.

"Anya, please!" Marcie gasps as she appears to be wriggling in thin air. It's sort of kind of almost funny, except for he context which really isn't. "Help!"

And Anyanka's face changes. It becomes pointier and veinier, now she looks like the picture from the book. What did all the supernatural evil beasties have changing faces? At least this one still has the proportions of a high schooler.

"Anya…?" Marcie's gone from pleading to squeak, because understandably, terror.

"Anyanka," Buffy corrects pointlessly. "Of the demony vengeance. Good job."

"Oh please," says Anyanka, stalking toward them like an angry veiny predatory thing. "Can't you do anything right at all? I really should have-" But she collides with something invisible, stumbles, and knocks into the wall herself. (And the poster board is waving on its own, because when Buffy goes to elbow Willow she elbows empty air. Right. Magic. Duh.) There's a moment of everything being really still, like the whole situation's on pause, and then Anyanka lunges for Marcie, Buffy drops Marcie and goes attack-mode because demon, Marcie flails into a fire extinguisher and (huh, props for panic response) points it at Anyanka, and wow wouldn't this be easier if Willow wasn't invisible too.

One ungainly super-strength grapple later, Buffy realizes a key point: Marcie's still got the necklace on. The one that's Anyanka's chakra thing. That Anyanka's clearly going for herself, which would double-imply that she needs it back.

"Right," says Buffy. "How about no." And she hits Anyanka in the veiny face, vaults backwards like she's landing on the top of a cheer pyramid, and yanks the stupid necklace over Marcie's head and off.

"Don't you dare—" Anyanka snarls.

"Oh, I dare. It's what I do," says Buffy, even though no one can appreciate her quips at the moment. Then there's a little bit of frantic running around the school, because even though she's got the necklace Buffy doesn't really know what to do with it (put it on and wish herself visible? use some sort of spell?), but what ends up happening is they tear past the library just as Giles is apparently locking up for the day, Anyanka sees opportunity and grabs him ("—Give me it, or I snap his neck!"), and Buffy stops thinking about the correct course of action and slams the necklace into the wall full force—

—and there's a green glow that filters through the whole school—

—and Anyanka screams—

—and there's a sense of something snapping back, like a rubber band that someone pulled and then abruptly let go—

—and Buffy sees Willow skid to a stop next to Giles, who has Anyanka's wrists pinned but looks otherwise baffled.

"She's a demon!" Willow yells. Giles looks from her, to Buffy, to Anyanka (Anya? She looks like Anya now.) and sighs.

"There's really no need to shout about it. I can hear you just fine." He pauses and shoots Anya a curious look. "Though, er, I'm not certain—she, er, she seems rather… human, to me. And where have you two been?"

Ugh. Buffy hates being explanations girl.

Oh! And we have a poll! Since this is technically the Valentine's Day episode, (and we're nearing college time, there's like three episodes left of Season 3) it seems like a good time to put up the shipping poll. Got a ship you want to see—as a one off, a long-term thing, whatever? Let us know! We'll try to work it in! And since no one dies... Anyway, the link is here: forms/d/1jWg7AmNpp4YQpJR9eZjCeDhIf9T1dvsDnS47I27ZyhY


	24. 1999, Valentine's Day

Nothing happens without context, not even the little things. Let's take a step back to three hours earlier. Buffy's asleep, of course, because slightly-late mornings are blessing for a Slayer, and for once she's not dreaming anything prophetic. She's dreaming of summertime and sand, and in the dream she dives deep into salty blue water and is relieved that it's exactly like water is supposed to be. Little fish dart about below her, shimmery and bright, and she's not afraid of drowning.

(It's not in any way her fault that she's unaware of what's going on across town. She's just a person, just a girl, and it would be a cruel fate indeed that would rob her of dreams just to make her solve other people's problems. Nevertheless, across town another girl her age is listening to a voicemail left at an ungodly hour of the morning, feeling to numb to even shake.

"Hey Marcie, it's Jesse," says the voice on the line. "I just...wanted to say that…you know you're awesome right? Like the best girlfriend ever. Totally awesome and...really pretty. Like the prettiest girl in school. And really really really smart. And so much fun. But...I mean we're graduating soon so…. I think we should break up. But you're still really awesome and totally smart and funny and...I mean high school stuff never lasts right? You're gonna go somewhere else, I'm gonna go somewhere else...and that somewhere else is the army. I'm going to the army. Like the minute we graduate I'm headed to basic." He pauses again. "I haven't told anyone else that, you know. It's sort of funny. Listen, I don't mean to… I really do think you're great, Marcie, but you get it, right? I know you get it. We're just going different places now. Yeah. Okay. I'll… I guess I'll see you."

And there's no one there to see her, of course, because when she isn't Jesse's girl she isn't anyone, she may as well not be there at all, and it's February 12th and she thinks she may die. No, that's not right, not die. Her hands ball into fists on her lap and she takes a shaky breath and thinks of blood and vengeance.)

So Buffy's running late to school that day, and she doesn't see anything weird happening. She's mostly focused on running while eating a breakfast burrito and thinking about how the heck she could possibly fight an entire politician who wants to turn into an entire Old One and why would anyone even do that, you know? And Willow thinks that and Old One would have cool powers but that's just a Willow thing to think and if the pictures Buffy's seen in Giles's books and the Binders of Ascension are anything to go by any cool powers would be mitigated by the abominable monster form thing. Like, none of them have hands!

("I don't want luck, you know. I just… I just really wish—" Marcie begins, then pauses. The girl she's talking to gestures for her to go ahead.

"Get it out of your system, you'll feel better," she says. "I promise."

"It's not even just him," Marcie says. "It's Jesse but it's all his stupid friends too. I wish—I wish they knew what real loneliness felt like!" The other girl smiles, and her smile is too wide and her face goes all strange but Marcie is too upset to pay it any real attention.

"Wish granted.")

It seems completely normal, for a little while—Buffy's just glad when she manages to duck around Principal Wood and avoid a lecture about Not Ignoring Your Academic Responsibilities Buffy, You Have A Unique Opportunity and then she's glad again when no one stares at her for vaulting a desk to get to her desk in English class, and then she's glad a third time because ha, looks like Xander's even later than she is—

And then she's marked absent even though she pretty much yells and waves her hands in the air. So that's weird.

"Maybe she's skipping school again," Nancy mutters darkly. "She's that type."

"Oh, shut up," Buffy tells her, but it's really obvious no one hears her. So she yells in Nancy's ear, just to confirm it, and marks the whole thing down as Hellmouthy-weirdness. Whatever's behind it, she has to talk to Willow. And Giles. And probably find Xander, who's still not in class? At least no one's going to notice if she just like, leaves, so she does.

Over the next two hours she makes several discoveries. First: Xander, Willow, and even Jesse are nowhere to be found. Second: She still has to open doors to go into rooms, and absolutely no one finds random doors opening to be weird. Third: She's really good at aiming erasers at people's heads, and she's probably way too immature for this whole almost-graduated thing. Fourth: It is entirely possible to make Faith punch through a fire extinguisher while invisible and un-hear-able, oops. Fifth: Giles sort of doesn't notice she's gone at all. That last one she figures out once she's invisible'd her way to the library, only to hear him deep in conversation with Ms. Calendar.

"He's getting to you. Wesley." That's definitely Ms. Calendar, Buffy thinks, as she lurks invisibly by the office door. She and Giles must be in his office. And since there's talking there probably isn't smoochies. Good, today is weird enough without any of...that.

"Is it that obvious?" Giles answers. Buffy peeks in the door to see Giles sitting at his desk chair with his glasses off. He's rubbing his temples. He looks rumpled, and tired. Rumpled and tired is something Buffy has never seen on Giles. Ms. Calendar is leaning against the wall, hands clasping a cup of coffee. Buffy wonders how much of the older woman's blood is made up of caffeine. She hangs in the door and waits for them to notice her.

"I'm not overly fond of the way he's treating you either." Giles is sitting up with his glasses back on. Yeah they're definitely talking about Wesley. The little worm is the only person Buffy knows who can be pompous and snippy in the same breath. And then accuse other people of being that.

"Meh, I can take him. Besides Faith is about ready to tie weights to his feet and dump him off the docks." Ms. Calendar smirks, taking a sip of coffee. That's definitely true. Faith hates the new Watcher way, way more than even Buffy does. It's like she's got a personal bone to pick, and like, maybe she does, who knows what goes on in Faith's head besides not-strategy and kinda weird fashion choices. But since they both listen to Giles they both have to do what Wesley says. Giles sits on the little couch, takes his glasses back off and begins rubbing his forehead again. He looks so...old. It's weird and uncomfortable and Buffy almost wonders if she should even be here for this but whatever, she's already lurking so may as well stay. Ms. Calendar puts down her cup of coffee and walks over to Giles.

"What can I do to make this at least a little ok?" she asks gently, sitting down next to him and taking his hand. Yeah, nope, lurking may not be a good idea, Buffy thinks, because it looks like Giles might cry. Or kiss Ms. Calendar. Either way, not something she wants to see. Buffy clears her throat in the way she's seen a lot of adults do. Nobody hears her, of course, but it was worth the try. Giles just shrugs, and Ms. Calendar tries again. "Look, if it'll make things a little easier...maybe Faith could...have the apartment to herself?" Ms. Calendar chews on her lip and looks like she'd rather be somewhere else. Buffy can so relate.

"Then where would you go?" Giles asks, alarmed. Buffy… well, she wouldn't say she perks up, exactly, but she leans awkwardly through the door to hear better. Is Ms. Calendar leaving? Is her family sending her after Angel again? Would that mean Angel would come back or…? But no, Ms. Calendar apparently has something else in mind.

"I was maybe thinking I could...move in with you?" Oh wow… Yep, this is so very much not a conversation Buffy should be there for, invisible or not. She tries the throat-clearing again and leans on the door really hard but they're still ignoring her.

"Oh," says Giles. For a guy who talks so so so much Giles goes really really silent. But at least he looks less old now. Now… flabbergasted is sort of the word. Ms. Calendar fidgets.

"It's just a thought. I mean I'm spending more and more nights a week there than at my place—" Say what now? "—and half my stuff is already there. Plus maybe it could get the Council off your back a little." Big talk for the woman who broke Giles's heart like, last year. Buffy kicks at the open door, to exactly no response even though it bounces off the wall and makes noise. Giles is still being really quiet.

"I see," he says quietly. Ms. Calendar seems to maybe catch on to the seriously-what-the-hell of the situation because she starts to backpedal really bad.

"Look if you don't want to, we can find another solution, maybe we could ask the council for a stipend so Faith can get her own place, or she could just stay with me, messing with Wesley is always fun." Honestly that may have just set the new record in rambling, but she stops when Giles sort of quiet-laughs. It's not an upset quiet-laugh either.

"I just never thought...this step forward would be prompted by the Council," he says, rubbing the bridge of his nose—but the glasses are still on. That probably means something, right? It's Ms. Calendar's turn to go all quiet and sorta starry-eyed.

"You mean you were planning on asking me eventually?" Okay this is heading into smoochie territory, and Buffy seriously can't handle more of that. Time for desperate measures. Picking up a small axe that Giles has just sitting on a pile of papers (and he gets on her case about weapons maintenance? Come on, Giles!) she chucks it at the wall over their head. Bullseye. They both jump and stare at the wall. Finally! Attention!

"Rupert, I think you have a ghost." Ms. Calendar finally says with a smile. "Maybe your predecessor?" Argh!

"My immediate predecessor retired to Florida," says Giles mildly, and Ms. Calendar says something about Florida that Buffy really doesn't care about, and then throwing things has exactly no effect so she tries to steal Giles's stupid crystal ball paperweight and he just like snatches it out of her hands and says "no" like he's talking to a little kid or a dog or something and honestly she's just done.

She'll figure this invisible thing out on her own.

Only when she invisible-angry-marches out of the stupid library (Giles is saying something about keeping his head while Ms. Calendar sarcasms at him) she collides head-on with something else invisible and they both(?) go down like a sack of bricks, which is to say heavily and really clumsily.

"Ow!" Buffy whines. "Who's that?" Okay, totally pointless. But! More importantly, at least one other invisible person, which would suggest that she's not being like, personally targeted by some kind of invisibleifying demon-thing. She cautiously puts out a hand until she hits something invisible but physically there. It feels like old leather and something weirdly electric, but before she can really process that a hand grabs her wrist drags her into first one classroom (class going on, no one looks up) then another (study hall for freshmen, loud) and finally a third which is empty (Ms. Calendar's natch, because she's planning a lovey-dovey future with Giles in the library, ugh).

"Okay, what do you want?" Buffy asks. The other invisible person tugs at her, pulling her toward the row of computers and taps at one until it turns on. "Wait," says Buffy, who is really not good at the no-one-can-hear-her thing. "Willow?" There's only rapid typing in reply.

 _I'm sorry to do this!_ , says the text running across the screen. _I don't think we can communicate out loud right now? But but we're both invisible and I'm Willow Rosenberg I'm a senior who're you?_ Oh. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

 _Will, it's me_ , she types back, albeit a lot more slowly because computers? Not really her thing. _It's Buffy_

So invisi-Willow tacklehugs her and they take down like three chairs and one of Ms. Calendar's crystally doodads but whatever.

Over the next five minutes they manage to compare stories: Willow was just fine getting to school, and she'd been talking to Xander about how Jesse was being super weird and then she'd turned around and Xander'd been gone.

 _Invisibled too?_ Buffy wrote. There was a moment of silence where she guessed Willow was nodding intensely.

 _Sorry must have. And I couldn't find you I was looking for you and if Xander and Jesse are magicked too ? what happened? ? ?_

 _Hellmouth_ , Buffy writes back. _Something Hellmouthy. We need to find/slay/fix._

 _Monster? Spell?_ Willow types. _Research time?_ But they wouldn't know where to start. Whatever it is…

 _Something triggered it. Summoned it? We need to see who it affected._ And look at that, she can Giles with the best of them. Willow bounces in place and and the computer mouse bounces with her.

Ms. Calendar is so wrong. Researching on the computer is just as long and slow as using the books. They have tons of demons that can turn themselves invisible, and spells that can turn the caster invisible but nothing about turning someone else invisible! Or multiple someone elses. Someones else? Anyway, the internet is a bust on invisibilification. What it's not a bust on is school attendance records, apparently, if you're Willow and have no qualms about technically internet crime.

 _Xander and Jesse are both out!_ Willow types. _Everyone else called in but they're and we're unaccounted for_

 _So fine. Something we've got in common_ , Buffy writes back.

Buffy totally forgot it was a Wicca Club day. But as soon as the last bell rings people start filing into Ms. Calendar's classroom and start moving desks around. Buffy recognizes most of them, Amy, Michael, that short kid, Tucker's brother who tried summoning those demons at the public pool, and some other kids who Buffy knows by face but not by name.

They start pulling homework-looking papers and crystals and things (that's a flute, Wells Jr. has a flute, that's just weird) out of their bags, chatting about random stuff. It's not the sort of conversation she'd pay attention to normally, so it sort of washes over her now too. Faith's not showing up, according to Amy, because she's got "detectiving" to do, and seriously even though she's probably barking up all kinds of the wrong tree Buffy's really happy to hear that. Faith doing Faith things. Or Slayer things. (And like, there's plenty of overlap there.)

So they sit and they wait and they watch and they listen but no one's saying anything about invisible-making spells. It seems like the topic of choice is luck charms, actually, and the making and blessing thereof. It all goes sort of over Buffy's head, but she does grasp that it's actually sort of tough.

"It's a matter of the correct invocation for the process," says Amy firmly. "For what you want the luck for. Lucky in love, lucky on a test, that sort of thing."

"But there's gotta be a, a, a general version, right?" says the short kid, who's named something like James or John and ugh he's in like four of Buffy's classes, she kinda feels bad not knowing but priorities, you know?

"Like a 'make your life suck less' spell?" a freshman girl asks, and the short kid nods. Wells Jr. (Anthony? Dang it, Ms. Calendar knows his name…) looks thoughtful.

"It'd be big, though, right?" he says slowly. Amy nods.

"Way too big for any of you," she says in kind of a snobby voice. "The sort of power you'd have to call on to change who you are on that level would—"

"Dabbling in power well beyond the mortal ken to break through the limitations set by a cruel and arbitrary world—" Wells Jr. intones. Literally everyone rolls their eyes, definitely including Buffy and probably including Willow, who lobs a pencil at Wells Jr.'s head (and misses).

So that's a good moment for Ms. Calendar to turn up, followed shortly by Marcie and some girl Buffy doesn't know.

"Sorry. Sorry I'm late." Ms. Calendar says stepping around various students and heading to the board. She's erasing various bits of computer code and tech lingo and drawing various crystals and things. They aren't very good drawings so she starts labeling stuff. Buffy catches names like rose quartz and silver and tin. But also things like acorns and brooms and salt. As she starts working on the acorn (that is the biggest thing on the board) she starts talking about charms and how putting all stuff in a bag, with the right chants and willpower, gave the person holding the bag power. Buffy wonders if it would help her on patrol.

Marcie's new friend says her name is Anya and she's a transfer student. She's pretty, in a sorta pointy-looking way and seems a bit less than pleased at having Marcie glommed onto her. She can, though, follow the Wicca Club's rambling conversation without much trouble (it's clear from her occasional interruptions) and really? Slayer instincts have something to say about mysterious strangers Buffy's never seen before appearing randomly and having clear knowledge of magic directly after something weird-magic-y's happened, and they're saying stabby.

"I'm just glad I don't have to see them," says Marcie quietly while Ms. Calendar is trying to convince a group of the younger kids that luck spells probably won't help them on a multiple choice test as much as studying would. New girl, Anya, smiles, but her smile's a bit off. Just a bit, just a little, a similar way to when she sees a crowded room and knows there's a vampire in there somewhere, like whens she knows something's just around a corner. New girl's not a witch, she thinks, it's not the something-wrong that was with Willow, it's a monster-wrongness. (And she's sitting in Ms. Calendar's classroom smiling and Buffy can't even tell anyone.)

"Of course," says Anya. "It's better that way. You won't have to see them at all." Marcie sniffles and leans against the girl's shoulder.

"Won't I? I can't hide forever, can I?"

"You don't have to," says Anya with a tone like she's doing math. "That's the thing about wishes. When they come true, they come true."

"You two okay back there?" Ms. Calendar asks, looking over at them. Anya's face doesn't lose its bland smile.

"Yes," she says. "Everything's fine."

"Sorry," says Marcie, fiddling with the green crystal necklace she's wearing. Anya's expression flickers.

"Why?" she asks. "It's all his fault, not yours."

"Bad breakup?" Ms. Calendar looks sympathetic. Marcie clenches her fists on her knees.

"It's all over now," she says, then looks over at Anya for confirmation.

"Oh yeah," says Anya, and there's an expression about smiling like a cat that drank cream? Or maybe ate a bird? That's the face she's making. "All over."

Ms. Calendar grabs a chair and looks like she's going to settle in for a long gabfest but then Wells Jr. starts talking really loudly again. Somebody's touching his magic flute.

"Hey, give that back! Give it!" Wells Jr. wails. One of the guys (she thinks he's one of the ones that hang around Ms. Calendar's computer classes, maybe he had a thing for magic?) had grabbed the flute-thing and was examining it. "It's not a toy! It's how I connect to the great ethers of the beyond! Transcending the bonds of—give it!" By now this has gotten the entire club staring at him as he snatches the instrument back and cradles it like it's a small animal and not, you know, a lame flute-thing of etherness.

"Ms. Calendar! They keep touching my flute!" he whines. Oh god, is Wells Jr. an actual child? "They aren't respecting my personal property or space!" He's really getting worked up, which comes with a side of wow that's high-pitched. "An-and I know more magic than any of these guys! So punish him? Please?"

Ms. Calendar has forgotten the chair in front of Marcie and Anya, and is now looking at Wells Jr. with that same look that Giles sometimes gives Xander when he brings the snacks that leave stains to the all night research sessions.

"Fitz, I can't believe I'm saying this but don't take stuff without asking. You know Andrew—" That was his name! "—no one is forcing you to be here. If you don't feel you're getting anything useful from this, you can leave." Buffy thinks Ms. Calendar looks like she's trying not to hope he would do just that. Instead Andrew gives her a wide-eyed look.

"Why would I leave?"

The internet fails them on the invisibility-inducing breakup-beasties that look like teenage girls front, shockingly enough, so Willow leaves a typed note on Ms. Calendar's computer explaining what they think happened and not to trust Anya with her monster-cat smile and make for the library again. (Giles can't see them, but it doesn't matter—Buffy's done plans on her own before, and sometimes they even work.)

It's pitch dark out before they find anything, but score one for the musty old books and score zero for Ms. Calendar's computer lab, because a book that's literally bigger than most backpacks contains an entire chapter on vengeance demons. The information's spotty, as if it's been put together from a lot of different sources, but it's all "powers of the wish" this and "wreaking vengeance upon mortals" that and there's an interesting picture of a monster-looking woman with a really familiar pendant around neck.

"Will! Look!" Okay, she's just yelling to fill the silence right now. More effectively, she grabs Willow by the arm and yanks her toward the book (and away from her weird Latin-y stuff, which Buffy thinks is more luck spells than invisibility-problem-solving, come on, Willow, priorities). Willow is presumably just as hyped as she is, because Buff gets headbutted in the face in all the excitement.

The demon is named Anyanka, which sounds a lot like Anya, and the book calls her the patron of scorned women. It also has a lot to say about Anyanka's pretty necklace, which sure looks like the one Marcie's wearing—more and more like it the more Buffy stares at the book.

 _That's her power center. Like her chakra_ , Willow scribbles in a notebook. Buffy plucks the notebook and Willow's stupid distinctive gel pen from the air to write back.

But the other question on Buffy's mind is, why is Anyanka hanging around Marcie? Marcie is… Buffy doesn't actually know what's going on with Marcie. She knows that she's in the band and...was dating Jesse. But probably not so much anymore, if the bit about the bad breakup is to be believed... Does that make her scorned enough? Because, like, it's Jesse of all people. He's sort of lame and has all the wrong opinions on comic books and just because Willow says he's growing into his ears doesn't mean he doesn't look sort of like an angry ferret. Could anyone really be scorned over that?

But nobody but her really likes Angel and Buffy still misses him. Still rereads his letters, still dreams about him. That's what love's like, maybe. It makes your brain do the wacky. She thinks about that as she's slamming Marcie up against a locker while Willow holds up a sign with _HOW DO WE STOP THE SPELL?_

"I don't know what the spell is!" Marcie wails. "I don't—I don't know!" Willow boffs her with the sign, to no great effect. "I swear! I don't even know who you people are!"

Oh. So that's kinda a problem. And making too much noise of the slamming into lockers variety could bring the kind of attention Buffy doesn't want. Like the demon Anyanka. She needs an idea, only she can't talk and she's all out of smart ideas—

"Marcie?" And that's one problem that could probably not be there. Anya (no, not Anya, Anyanka—Anyanka the patron demon of scorned women, and how did Buffy not see that one coming?) is marching purposefully down the hall, and oh yeah, all she can see is Marcie hovering a foot off the ground getting whacked on the head with a rolled up poster board.

"Anya, please!" Marcie gasps as she appears to be wriggling in thin air. It's sort of kind of almost funny, except for he context which really isn't. "Help!"

And Anyanka's face changes. It becomes pointier and veinier, now she looks like the picture from the book. What did all the supernatural evil beasties have changing faces? At least this one still has the proportions of a high schooler.

"Anya…?" Marcie's gone from pleading to squeak, because understandably, terror.

"Anyanka," Buffy corrects pointlessly. "Of the demony vengeance. Good job."

"Oh please," says Anyanka, stalking toward them like an angry veiny predatory thing. "Can't you do anything right at all? I really should have-" But she collides with something invisible, stumbles, and knocks into the wall herself. (And the poster board is waving on its own, because when Buffy goes to elbow Willow she elbows empty air. Right. Magic. Duh.) There's a moment of everything being really still, like the whole situation's on pause, and then Anyanka lunges for Marcie, Buffy drops Marcie and goes attack-mode because demon, Marcie flails into a fire extinguisher and (huh, props for panic response) points it at Anyanka, and wow wouldn't this be easier if Willow wasn't invisible too.

One ungainly super-strength grapple later, Buffy realizes a key point: Marcie's still got the necklace on. The one that's Anyanka's chakra thing. That Anyanka's clearly going for herself, which would double-imply that she needs it back.

"Right," says Buffy. "How about no." And she hits Anyanka in the veiny face, vaults backwards like she's landing on the top of a cheer pyramid, and yanks the stupid necklace over Marcie's head and off.

"Don't you dare—" Anyanka snarls.

"Oh, I dare. It's what I do," says Buffy, even though no one can appreciate her quips at the moment. Then there's a little bit of frantic running around the school, because even though she's got the necklace Buffy doesn't really know what to do with it (put it on and wish herself visible? use some sort of spell?), but what ends up happening is they tear past the library just as Giles is apparently locking up for the day, Anyanka sees opportunity and grabs him ("—Give me it, or I snap his neck!"), and Buffy stops thinking about the correct course of action and slams the necklace into the wall full force—

—and there's a green glow that filters through the whole school—

—and Anyanka screams—

—and there's a sense of something snapping back, like a rubber band that someone pulled and then abruptly let go—

—and Buffy sees Willow skid to a stop next to Giles, who has Anyanka's wrists pinned but looks otherwise baffled.

"She's a demon!" Willow yells. Giles looks from her, to Buffy, to Anyanka (Anya? She looks like Anya now.) and sighs.

"There's really no need to shout about it. I can hear you just fine." He pauses and shoots Anya a curious look. "Though, er, I'm not certain—she, er, she seems rather… human, to me. And where have you two been?"

Ugh. Buffy hates being explanations girl.

Oh! And we have a poll! Since this is technically the Valentine's Day episode, (and we're nearing college time, there's like three episodes left of Season 3) it seems like a good time to put up the shipping poll. Got a ship you want to see—as a one off, a long-term thing, whatever? Let us know! We'll try to work it in! And since no one dies... Anyway, the link is here: forms/d/1jWg7AmNpp4YQpJR9eZjCeDhIf9T1dvsDnS47I27ZyhY


	25. 1999, March

Marcie cries for like a solid day, and begs forgiveness Buffy isn't sure she can give. Pity she can give, mercy she can give, understanding and a lack of retribution, sure, but she doesn't know if forgiveness can be part of the package. (Giles talks up the virtues of compassion and how forgiveness isn't about you it's about them, but he's not a forgiving person either, not really, and she remembers the feeling of him jabbing a needle into her arm and how he hasn't asked forgiveness for that.) But she still pats Marcie on the head and tells her it's all over now, and Marcie says whatever college she goes to will be far, far away, and Buffy says it's good to have a new start. (And after she says it she thinks it's something Giles said once, but maybe it was what Marcie needed to hear.)

Anyanka (or rather, Anya) stays at Sunnydale High. Buffy isn't entirely sure why, because even if she is trapped as a human (oops? but also totally Anya's own fault) why would she ever want to stay on a Hellmouth? Or in any place where she has to dodge around Wesley's interrogations, because apparently the guy is making up for being out on super-secret Watcher business (Giles says it was report-writing) for the duration of the invisi-Buffy extravaganza by trying to pick holes in her cover story. (Everyone involved came to the unanimous decision to not tell him a thing, and Buffy catches Giles practicing his innocent face in his office.)

"I hope you're not holding it against us," says Willow, of course. "Making you a person again." They may need to have a girl talk about things you maybe possibly shouldn't use as conversation starters.

"I do," says Anya, then shrugs. "But I'd have done the same thing. Humans don't usually manage it." (Anya talks a lot of trash about humans, which is why it's so funny to see her tagging along with Xander. Xander, Buffy thinks, is the most intensely human person she knows.)

—

Valentine's Day is lame when your vampire sorta-boyfriend's in another country. It's not the sort of thing you can openly complain about, though, even to your friends who know about the vampire sorta-boyfriend, so she decides she's just going to ignore the whole thing until it goes away (and not think about Angel-kisses or curses or destinies-with-a-capital-D). Willow arrives in the library with a gigantic box of (not-evil) chocolate bars and and anti-Valentines for everyone. Willow is kinda sorta the best sometimes.

—

In the hospital where Allen Finch is recovering from being stabbed, Buffy runs into Mr. Trick. In an elevator. The vampire looks at her sideways.

"Come to visit someone?" he asks. It would be very easy to stake him then and there, she thinks, but he's not doing anything. (And she thinks of Trick bailing on the fight in the sewers and of Spike crying like a teenage girl on Ms. Calendar's shoulder, so she keeps her hand on the stake in her pocket but doesn't attack.)

"Slayer business," she answers. Finch says he's got information on the Mayor's evil plot. More information, anyway. Trick nods sagely.

"See, I'm here to eat the deputy mayor," he answers. "Seems like he's getting loose-lipped."

"Really," says Buffy, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Trick smiles, all teeth.

"I thought about it though, and you know what? It's not my Ascension to worry about." He fishes a plane ticket out of his pocket and holds it out to her. "Give Finch my best, Slayer," he adds.

The elevator pings open on the fourth floor, and Buffy gets out but the vampire doesn't. She should stake him, she thinks, but instead she stands there considering it with Finch's plane ticket in her hand while Trick waves a friendly goodbye and the doors close.

Finch tells all there is to tell (invulnerability, rituals, the whole thing, but not times and dates) and Giles drives him to the airport, and then that's done.

"And Trick?" Faith asks, later. Buffy smiles and stabs the air with a pencil.

"Dust," she lies. The lie comes easily enough, and tension she'd barely noticed in Faith's shoulders eases. (The last of Kakistos's men gone, then, she's safe, then, the nightmare's over.

"Good," says Faith. "Hope it hurt."

"He squirmed, so maybe?" says Buffy, and Faith laughs. (It's just as well, because she doesn't see him again. Mr. Trick of the inconsistent loyalties has apparently skipped town with a small fortune in municipal funds and a very fast car with tinted windows.)

And the rest of February is normal enough. Hellmouth-normal, anyway. Buffy splits patrols with Faith, Willow goes back to studying magic but under Ms. Calendar's watchful eye, Marcie fades into the background of the Wicca club and sits with Jonathan at lunch, Jesse tells everyone he's joining the army, Xander spends hours talking Anya through basic human interactions, Giles makes a potential Ascension timeline that ends up almost entirely covered by post-it notes… the usual.

It's not a weird night to start with when Buffy's patrolling downtown and hears a familiar scream. (It's always jarring when it's someone familiar, even though it makes sense, much as she hates it, that sometimes vampires and demons try to eat people she knows. Just math. Statistics.)

She rounds the corner at a run to see Cordelia hitting a vampire with a two-by-four (and her purse) while screaming her head off, Harmony and another girl cowering behind her, and two more vamps watching what's going on and looking like they're not entirely sure they're hungry enough for this. (Honestly, Buffy doesn't think Cordelia'd be worth eating either.)

So she stakes one of the vamps before he can turn around, throws the other two around for a bit, and dusts them, because three-on-one isn't really fun but it's pretty normal for her. (Okay, it should cross her mind that it's not normal for, like, normal people, but Sunnydale's a Hellmouth, what kind of deluded do you have to be to not know you're pretty much tripping over the undead here?) And when she looks back up Cordy's brushing vampire off her skirt but Harmony and the other girl (Aurora? something like that) are sort of gawking. So Buffy does the Buffy thing and grins and waves like a total idiot. (Harmony waves back, because Harmony may actually be a total idiot.)

"That was… cool," says Cordette 3, looking from Buffy to where the vampires aren't. "Where, uh, where'd you learn to hit like that?"

"Practice," says Buffy, because she got the superpowers in the Slayer-destiny-deal but she's as of recently really aware of how much of the Slayer-kickass-ness comes from spending her afternoons training and her evenings learning how vampires actually like, move. "Lots of practice."

"I thought you had superpowers!" says Harmony. Cordelia rolls her eyes.

"Harm, come on. You don't say things like that to people." Cordette 3 (Aura, maybe?) looks pensive.

"Buffy, yeah?" she says. Buffy nods. "You think you could teach us? To fight like that?" An answer of probably not is on the tip of her tongue, but hey, Cordelia'd held off a vampire on her own, and how much easier would it be if people could buy themselves enough time to scream for help? Ten seconds, twenty seconds, maybe even long enough to run away. (Sunnydale's a Hellmouth, after all, and maybe Cordette 3 isn't deluded enough to not notice something's wrong.)

"Yeah, I, I guess," Buffy says uncertainly. "I mean, I could teach you a bit. Basics. Self defense." (How to stick a thumb in your enemy's eye and kick them where it hurts, because even vampires and demons can feel pain, how to turn a cheer routine into a kata, how to hit with your elbows.)

"Great!" says Cordelia, suddenly loud and chipper. "How much do you charge per person per lesson? Because the Bronze is absolutely crawling with creeps, and they get all grabby with pretty girls!" Buffy opens her mouth, then closes it again because Cordelia is going on and on about price plans.

So that ends with her Wednesday afternoons booked through the end of the school year for teaching Cordelia's friends how to punch in return for money. Harmony promises posters, Aura (she was right!) promises to bring everyone she knows, and Cordelia winks at Buffy over both their heads like they're friends and not semi-sorta-rivals.

(Wesley tells her she can't charge people for her destiny and duty. Giles, who appears to be putting alcohol in his tea, says that most people's duty and destiny don't come with a trust fund and volunteers Faith to help with the classes. Anya volunteers herself as treasurer.)

––––

What is a very weird night (and morning, and day, etc) comes a week or two later, when a tussle with two mouthless creep-beasts leaves Buffy with a gross stain on her shirt, an itchy arm, and the late-arriving ability to hear people's thoughts. It's funny (ugh, does Xander think about anything else?) and then it's annoying (ugh, doesn't anyone think of anything else?) and then it's overwhelming. But she does learn a couple of things. Like Andrew from Wicca Club narrates his life like those PBS specials her mom likes to watch, complete with a fake British(?) accent. And Giles has snarky thoughts about what everyone is wearing (she spent a lot of money on that shirt, and anyway what does he know?), Wesley has a weird sort of crush on Ms. Calendar (really? Buffy doesn't see it but files that one away, right next to not being able to look the guy in the eye anymore, holy crap), and Amy's invisible boyfriend is real (but with a really stupid name). Oh, and someone wants to murder everyone. Because it's Sunnydale. Of course. Buffy makes a plan to tell Principal Wood, but she blacks out in a parking lot before she can actually do anything. Giles drives her home and promises she'll be fine, but it's not fine at all, she can hear it in his head that she'll go completely nuts if they don't figure out a way to make it stop. (One good thing, though, is that the mind reading and the band candy adventure didn't happen at the same time. It's weird enough to know her mom thinks Giles is dashing.)

(She's not there to see the grand investigation, obviously, but Willow gives her the highlights reel later. There are threats and revelations and an evil lunch lady who gets busted by Xander of all people. Willow tells it like it's an action movie, even though action movies don't usually involve jello. But even evil jello sounds like more fun than having a mind-reading-y mental breakdown in her bed until Giles and Faith force demon-heart-juice down her throat. Ew. Not that she doesn't appreciate it, but ew. Also what is it with evil sugary snacks? It's like the universe has opinions about dieting.)

—

But anyway, it's fine, it's all good. Evil plan foiled, and Buffy lives to slay another day. With a whole lot of information in her head she didn't have before, but eh. That could be helpful. Somehow. Some of it. Like, for example the happy fun bit where she got a sneak peak into Ms. Calendar's innermost thoughts and found out she's a lying liar who lies. (But she's always been, says the voice in the back of Buffy's head. She's always told lies, why stop now? What, for Giles, Giles who is perfectly willing to double-cross Buffy and the Council alike with a straight face? Just as likely that Giles knows—and then she makes the head-voice shush.)

Finally she manages to catch Ms. Calendar alone between classes and corners her in her office. It's a literal cornering, and Buffy's halfway to Slayer-mode even though she really really really shouldn't be.

"You know where Angel is," she says coldly, standing so that she blocks the door. Ms. Calendar goes pale.

"Buffy—" she starts, but that's just going to be more lying isn't it?

"I heard you," Buffy snaps. It's meant to be accusing not whiny, but doesn't quite make the cut. "When I could read minds, I heard you. You know where he is and you've been hiding it!"

Ms. Calendar rests her forearms on her desk and takes a deep breath.

"Yes, I know where Angel is," she says. "I know where he is, who he's with, what he's doing...and I know that it was his choice to go. And that he doesn't plan on coming back." (It mostly goes in one ear and out the other, because Buffy wants to fight, so she just processes "mean".)

"He hasn't even been writing to me!" And definitely whiny, but Ms. Calendar should get it if she's got even a bit of a heart. "And I don't know if he's okay, if he got hurt, if anything's happening to him at all, but I thought that was because he's being all secrety, but no. No, you're making him do it, aren't you?" She's getting louder with every word, but really honestly doesn't care. Maybe she can yell Ms. Calendar's computer lab down, maybe she can yell her gameface down (and ugh does Buffy prefer when gamefaces are all fangy and bumpy rather than red-lipsticked and fake-cool).

Ms. Calendar slams her hands on the desk. "Goddammit, Buffy, do you know anything about the way this works? Some things are more important than your love life! And I'm personally tired of you blaming me when it's bad!" Ms. Calendar takes another deep breath, and Buffy feels a small sense of pride in hearing it shake. At least she's rattled. (Which, well, she should be, says the voice in the back of Buffy's head, a Slayer could snap Ms. Calendar like a twig—only she won't do that, why would she do that, she's just going to yell at her.) "I'm sorry I kept things from you, I really am," Ms. Calendar continues, "but you have to understand, this is the better option. Angel had to go."

"No he didn't!" Buffy snaps. "We had everything under control, and you—you've been trying to get rid of him forever! And you—" Her first train of thought, which is something petty about having a personality like an ancient curse, collides in mid-air with another train of thought. That one involves creepy Ethan sitting in the front seat of Ms. Calendar's car demanding Angel leave right-now-this-instant-no-goodbyes and Willow with a binder of chaos spells and lessons from Ms. Calendar and her dear Mr. Rayne and Angel chained to a wall. Her blood goes cold. How had she not seen that? "You! You and creepy Ethan! You've been working together this whole time!" (Okay, she's iffy on the whole time thing, but what she means is extended cahoots.) "And since you can't—you can't kill Angel, you're trying to make him—you tried to make him lose his soul so you could! And then—you need him out of the way, don't you? What do you need him out of the way for?"

"I'm not trying to do anything besides keep you all safe!" Ms. Calendar yells back standing up with her palms flat on her desk. "Angel is...he's not safe here. Not safe with...us." She looks like she was about to say something else but Buffy figures this is more than she had before. Maybe. "Angelus is too big of a danger to risk. I can't let him come back. That's what I was sent here to do!" She takes another shuddering breath. "Ethan was...the lesser of two evils. He knew the danger that was ahead and offered to help." Oh she's totally lying. Creepy Ethan would never help anyone. "Obviously I didn't know he'd have no problem drugging me and influencing Willow towards dark magic." Her face looks sour. "Things were bad. I don't think you know how bad. All signs were turning towards Angelus coming back." So what? Buffy huffs. Angelus was still Angel, and besides they had taken down all kinds of baddies, they could fix Angel too!

"Angelus isn't Angel. Where he goes...there's been nicer nightmares." Ms. Calendar waves her hand as if trying to conjure visions of doomy horror. "And signs were pointing to it happening again. That's why I sent him to Borneo."

Oh god, Buffy can't believe her ears. Ms. Calendar actually admitted she sent Angel away to keep him away. Not to hide the Judge's arm but because she wanted him gone. She's a sneaky lying sneak who sneaks around and lies!

"You sent him," Buffy says. (She's not sure which of the words she wants to stress more so she just stresses all of them.) "That's it, then. You want—that's what you want. You want him to go away and never come back! Well, he came back!" From Borneo, at least. "And he'll come back this time too, and you won't win, and he got out, you know, after your family chained him up and—"

"I'm the one who let him go!" Ms. Calendar is back to yelling again. "They were going to leave him there to starve. No matter how bad Angelus is, Angel didn't deserve that. But, he made the decision to leave on his own."

Buffy opens her mouth to yell more when it finally sinks in. "Angel wanted to leave me?" It comes out a lot shakier and squeakier than she wants. Ms. Calendar looks sad, but Buffy can't trust her anymore. So she's probably thrilled about this.

"He did it to keep you safe. He...we, didn't want to hurt you." Ms. Calendar walks out from behind her desk but Buffy takes another step back. "Didn't want to hurt me? You and Angel didn't want to hurt me? He left without even saying goodbye." She is definitely going to cry and that's bad because she's a Slayer. She doesn't get to be a normal girl. Normal girls get boyfriends who don't leave the country without saying anything and wouldn't lose their soul if they do things that she doesn't want to think about (or have Faith explain to her). She's a Slayer and has to deal with mystical type things and a sneaky Watcher with a lying sneaky girlfriend who both give her too many lectures on destiny.

Buffy has to get out of this tiny office. She can't breathe. Also Ms. Calendar looks like she might try to make her feel better and Buffy really, really can't handle that right now. Fumbling for the door Buffy runs out of there and towards, where else the library. Hitting things with weapons is a nice alternative to crying. (And it won't ruin her way too expensive mascara, which is always a plus.)

She whales on the practice dummies for hours, misses sixth and seventh period, and gets interrupted by Willow who wants to know if she's okay (she's not, and a voice in the back of her head says it's at least partway Willow's fault) and Xander who wants to know if she wants to get pizza (she's too upset to want to eat anything, and also she's wearing a white skirt and if she gets pizza on her skirt she's going to actually cry).

"I'm fine," she says.

"You, uh, don't have fine face," says Xander. "Is it fix it with donuts face?"

"No," says Buffy. "It's 'we're going to have to fight an Ascended mayor and I'm gonna hit him real hard' face." Xander looks doubtful.

"Giles said—" Willow starts (and Buffy wonders if Giles knows, but he's the kind of guy who knows things). Willow stops. "Nevermind. You, um, you're gonna go patrol?"

"Yep," says Buffy. "Soon as the sun sets."

"That's—" Xander starts, but Willow elbows him.

"Okay," she says brightly. "You, uh, I was working on a spell, I thought maybe—"

"No magic," says Buffy. (Ms. Calendar liked to talk about other people's magic, didn't she? So whose magic would this be? Hers, Giles's, creepy Ethan's…?) Willow puts up her hands.

"Okay, I just—make it easier—"

"It doesn't," Buffy snaps. (But she doesn't want to yell at Willow, not really, because it wasn't Willow who'd done it. Right? Willow's her friend, and people like creepy Ethan and Ms. Calendar are just using her. That's how come…)

"Hey!" Xander says sharply. "She's trying to help!"

"Sorry," Buffy says automatically. "I just… I don't need help patrolling. We need to figure out a timeline for the Ascension, and we need to figure out who the army guys are, and we all need to actually graduate I guess, and patrolling? That's the thing I'm good at, okay? So just … let me hit things, okay?"

"Okay," says Willow in a small voice.

"Buffy smash, got it," says Xander. He's being stupid, but it's a point. Anger's better than sadness, anger's better than crying, anger's better than a lot of things.

"Don't be an idiot," she says, and manages to grin. "Buffy no smash. Buffy stab."

—

Faith says the thrill of the hunt gets her blood pumping. For Buffy, it's almost calming on some level. Her senses go sharp and she can leave things like liars and traitors behind and put herself in a place where she's the only one of herself. (But she's not the only one, a voice in her head argues. There's three of them. That doesn't matter, though, because that's not what it feels like.) She usually tries to not leave things behind, usually tries to think about what her mom's making for dinner or some stupid thing someone said, because the alone is sort of scary, but right now it's what she needs.

(She doesn't see that she moves differently when she's hunting. It's an incremental thing, the shift from girl to Slayer, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. She should know something's different, though, when monsters run from her. She doesn't.)

There's a rhythm to it, really, and some hours in she's not upset anymore. She's a faraway sort of angry, yeah, but it's done, it's done, it's over. Angel's gone away and if he comes back he'll come back and if she means nothing to him then… then he's away, isn't he? It'll hurt more, it'll hurt again, when she goes back to being just herself, but for now she deals in certainties.

The crash she hears, for instance, that's certain, and she charges.

—

A pack of vampires have a girl cornered in the bus depot. Kudos to the girl, she's doing a very good job fending them off, but it's obvious she's running out of steam. Her knees give just as Buffy makes it into range, and one of the vampires crows something about victory right before Buffy grabs him by the hair and stakes him.

(No witticisms tonight.)

She takes down another four without breaking stride (and starts to notice they're scared then, only then) and turns around to get the fifth one but he's dust too—the girl is back up, swaying and unsteady but holding a stake—and she's… she's something familiar. That's not the right word, she's a girl, not a thing, and not just a girl, but right now—

"Kendra?" she asks, carefully. Mouth words are hard, and she's not sure she can make a lot of them at once. Kendra's arms are shaking and there's a bruise on her face that isn't going away like it's supposed to. Their eyes meet, and Kendra lowers the stake, slumps, exhausted.

"You were right," she says. "About the Cruciamentum." (And the world comes crashing back. Right. Traitors and liars and Giles with a needle and the Council, and Kendra's eighteen now, isn't she, it's her turn.)

"Yeah," she says. "I...yeah. Sorry."

"I ran away." Kendra ran away from her Watcher and the stupid rules and traditions from a bunch of crusty old snobs in England who probably taught Giles how to lie. (Kendra! Of all people. There's still hope for the world, or something.) Buffy feels herself grin.

Everything still hurts and it'll probably hurt for a really long time but there's a feeling somewhere deep in her chest that is not unlike pride. But that feeling flickers out when she has to catch Kendra before she falls completely to the ground. She has to get Kendra to safety, and though she hates that she thinks it that means she has to get Kendra to Giles. At least this time she's been through her own Cruciamentum and will be able to tell the truth from lies.


End file.
